


Open Your Skies

by vividder



Category: Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Future Fic, Gen, Older Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 12:01:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 37,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21814411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vividder/pseuds/vividder
Summary: When Artemis Fowl learns of an impending alien invasion, he rallies the fairies to join the Galaxy Garrison to give Earth a better chance at survival.Artemis Fowl fusion of S7 and S8 of Voltron: Legendary Defender.  Takes place ~30 years after The Last Guardian.
Relationships: Artemis Fowl & Foaly, Artemis Fowl & Sam Holt, Artemis Fowl II & Holly Short, Holly Short & Allura, Holly Short & Foaly, Holly Short & Trouble Kelp, MFE Pilots & Holly Short, Ryan Kinkade & Nadia Rizavi, Sam Holt & Foaly
Comments: 7
Kudos: 22





	1. Prologue

Artemis Fowl rested his elbows on the arms of his chair and touched the tips of his fingertips together underneath his chin as two holograms paced the room in front of him. 

“If the activity I’ve noticed within the Galaxy Garrison is legitimate--and I’m certain that it is--then what we’re facing is more grave than anything humans or the People have ever encountered. Earth itself is at stake. And without the Earth--”

“We’re all dead,” Foaly finished. His hologram had turned to look at something Artemis couldn’t see and his fingers danced across an invisible keyboard. Artemis assumed he was looking over the schematics he’d taken from the Garrison--alien schematics recently uploaded by Commander Holt.

“Before we do this, Artemis, we have to be certain,” Holly Short said, pausing in her pacing to speak. “You need to be more certain than you have ever been in your life--and Foaly has to agree--that Earth won’t survive without intervention from the People. There’s too much at stake for us to do this if it isn’t going to be totally necessary.”

Artemis pushed his glasses up his nose and sat up straighter. He looked the hologram in its eyes--one brown, one blue.

“I know I have a history regarding forcing the People into unnecessary human interactions, but after all these years, you must know that I do not make these requests lightly anymore.”

Silence hung heavy in the air.

“I’m just pulling together the simulations with the files from the Garrison...give me another few minutes.”

They watched as Foaly interacted with objects and data in virtual reality that only he could see.

After a few minutes, Holly checked the suit readout on her arm and tsked. “I have that meeting in ten minutes, Foaly.”

“Well, it’s not like I can make the computers process any faster, Commander!”

Commander Short rolled her eyes.

Two minutes before Holly’s deadline, Foaly delivered.

But he didn’t look victorious. A grave expression crossed his face.

“Alone, the Mud Men don’t stand a chance,” he said quietly. “And with the Galra technology, there’s no way we’re not discovered. They’d mine us for our Quintessence, then the humans, then destroy the rest. It would be the end for us. That last part happened in 96% of simulations, by the way. The greatest variable is how soon they manage to kill us all, not whether or not we manage to make it out of the labor camps or survive a genocide, by the way.”

“What’s the chance of the humans being able to drive them away?” Commander Short asked.

“Not to put too fine a point on it, but pretty much zilch.” Foaly looked away from his own machines for a moment. “Artemis is right, Holly. The stakes are too high not to take this chance. As much as it pains me to work with such primitive technology...such a disappointing species...we might not have any other option.”

“Swear to Frond?” Holly’s stare at the centaur was positively piercing.

“Swear it.”

Holly sighed and checked her suit readout again. “I have to go,” she said. “Artemis, figure out how this is going to happen.”

“Will do.”

Artemis severed the holographic link to the Lower Elements and moved to sit at his computer.


	2. Chapter 1

The email that caught Samuel Holt’s attention wasn’t the most recently received, nor from the Galaxy Garrison itself. At first glance it looked like it might be spam.

** _artemisfowl2@fowlindustries.co.uk_ **

_A proposal_ _2:43 PM_

_ External. Commander Samuel Holt… _

Sam opened it.

_ Commander Samuel Holt, _

_ Allow me to introduce myself. I am Artemis Fowl II, the CEO of Fowl Industries. It was quite a pleasant surprise to hear of your safe return to Earth. _

_ I have a proposal for you regarding that which you experienced during your unexpected exile. If you are amenable to hearing such, I will send a private jet to escort you to a meeting. Expect it to arrive at 9:00 AM on Wednesday morning. _

_ If you think that I am joking, see the attached file. _

_ I very much look forward to hearing from you. _

_ Sincerely, _

_ Artemis Fowl II _

_ Attached: hash.txt _

Commander Holt opened the attachment.

_ 1F81011A9F9306806B28D36875FD9DCCF9C512AFB6880AA3B78DB506BBB33B19 _

_ D831A83FD31B3922F7DDFE86ACEBB1074C2A700E01CD8F45C0500D3A724EAC31 _

_ 82AC14F14FC0BD3E4997ACCC6ACB020CB0F7CB08A30A5CA5BEEF9B88E5C91F2D _

_ 7EFC95617C370292FD8D0676F87FF23EC13DD663A2A9597DF7A413012807FC94 _

_ 3E6FFF458650C3717972CE6985DCF301DB4A7C994482E8EDE126B2B94150D8A8 _

And on and on it went. Hashes all the way down. It must have gone on for pages and pages, surely…

Sam opened another window in his browser and ran the hashes through the first translator to come up on Google.

_ Trip_log.zip _

_ Ship_schematics.zip _

_ Samuel_Holt_Hearing_Transcript.txt _

_ Pidge_Matt.jpg _

They were file names--files either about him or records he’d brought back from his trip through space. Recordings, flight plans, pictures, holograms--they were all there.

Sam slammed his laptop shut, unplugged it, and ran to find Admiral Sanda.

“What does he think he’s getting at?” Admiral Sanda snapped, looking over Sam’s first few decryptions. “How’d he get this?”

“I don’t know, ma’am,” Sam said anxiously. “But the file names are all correct thus far, and I don’t think he could have guessed them. And he knew I returned, which has been kept confidential.”

Sanda looked at the email again. “If this really is from Fowl and not an imposter, then we need to have that meeting so we can terminate our contracts with Fowl Industries and prosecute him for violations of international law.” Sanda reached up and tapped her earpiece. “Someone get me through to Fowl Industries.”

A few minutes later, Sanda’s desk phone rang. She pressed the button to put it on speaker.

“Admiral Sanda speaking.”

“Hello, Admiral, this is Eileen Stills, Mr. Fowl’s secretary. What can I help you with?”

“Did Mr. Fowl request a meeting with Galaxy Garrison personnel?”

A moment’s pause. “Yes, he did. I believe he suggested a time of 9AM tomorrow on the Fowl jet? Would you like to confirm that appointment?”

“Is it normal for Mr. Fowl to schedule his meetings personally?”

“Sometimes, ma’am, especially when he intends to discuss confidential matters.”

Admiral Sanda nodded thoughtfully.

“We accept the appointment.”

“Wonderful.” Another pause. “Who will be attending?”

“Commanders Holt and Iverson and myself.”

“Please be aware that the Fowl jet does have an EMP shield. To avoid damage to your property, it is suggested that you do not bring any electronic devices with you.”

Admiral Sanda and Commander Holt exchanged a look.

“Can’t he disable it for this meeting?”

“Unfortunately not, ma’am. Mr. Fowl insists upon it.”

Sanda muted the phone. “Fowl holds all the cards. Something suspicious is going on.”

“Are you going to accept?”

Sanda pressed the button again. “Is Mr. Fowl willing to relax any of the conditions of this meeting?”

“It says here that he has something of an incredibly sensitive nature to discuss with the Garrison and that his highest priority is preventing a security breach.”

Admiral Sanda pursed her lips for a moment. “Then please let him know that we accept.”


	3. Chapter 2

On Wednesday at 8:50 AM, the Fowl jet landed on the Galaxy Garrison runway.

Holt, Iverson, and Sanda stood outside the hanger and watched it touch down before taxiing to a stop.

Attendants at the runway attached a wheeling staircase to the doorway on the plane. They stepped back, and the door opened from the inside. Artemis Fowl stepped out onto the stairs and proceeded down to the tarmac to meet the Garrison personnel.

“Commander Iverson. Commander Holt. Admiral Sanda. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“You’re aware that in order to arrange this meeting, you’ve violated international law?” Admiral Sanda asked stiffly. “You’re either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid to leave your plane.”

“I’m neither. Simply pragmatic. You’ll want to know how I breached your systems, and I want you to hear my proposal. This meeting serves both purposes. So, shall we begin?”

A table filled much of the center of the aircraft. A screen covered the upper half of the front wall, with a curtain behind it, hiding the cockpit door.

The seats at the far end of the table had name cards for the Galaxy Garrison personnel. Cautiously, they sat in their assigned seats. Bottles of water and packages of crackers and cookies sat at each spot.

Artemis took his seat at the head of the table and waited for the plane to come to cruising altitude before he began his proposal.

“If you followed the news during my childhood--although I’m certain you were no more than children yourselves all those years ago--then you would have heard a number of strange things regarding my life. For example, at age 14, I disappeared for three years without explanation, only to return without having aged at all.”

Artemis turned on the screen, and a photograph of the headline “FOWL HEIR RETURNS!” appeared, with a picture of an unsmiling raven-haired boy, his parents, and his bodyguard.

“That same year, my mother fell ill with an ailment that no doctor could identify, only to miraculously recover.”

Another headline, this one from a tabloid and accompanied by a photo of a smiling blonde woman. WIFE OF FOWL INDUSTRIES CEO FACES UNKNOWN ILLNESS.

“Then came my own demise, shortly after the Crash.”

This time, the screen displayed a photograph of Artemis’s obituary, accompanied by a formal photograph of the extremely youthful eighteen year old.

“And yet I stand here before you today, alive. How? Well, I can tell you that all of the strange events that befell me during my teenage years were connected. They are related to the fairy People--whom I initially antagonized by kidnapping a member of their elite police forces, but with whom I later developed a mutually-beneficial alliance--and then a friendship.” 

Artemis paused to survey the confused expressions before him. “Ladies and gentlemen, to put it quite simply, fairies exist on Earth. And in this historic moment, they are done hiding. The threat to our planet from the Galra is too great to continue the separation between the species that has characterized much of written human and fairy history. But this Earth is theirs too, and they want to fight to defend it alongside us.”

“If you’re messing with us, Fowl…” Commander Iverson growled.

“I assure you, this is no trick, as ludicrous as it sounds. But perhaps you should hear it from the People themselves.” Artemis nodded to a spot in space, off to his right. “Commander Short, if you will?”

Artemis took a seat at the table.

And then a short woman materialized. She couldn’t have been more than a yard tall, and wore a black, form-fitting bodysuit. She had one blue eye and one brown.

And her ears were pointed.

She began to speak. “As Artemis said, I am Commander Holly Short of the Lower Elements Police Reconnaissance Unit--otherwise known as LEPRecon. I am of the First Family of the Fairies, the race known as Elves. I’ve known Artemis since he was twelve years old and he kidnapped me for ransom in order to obtain the funds to find his father, Artemis Fowl Sr. Artemis eventually became an ally of the People.

“The fairies have been monitoring human communications since the structures to do so have existed. We knew about the Galra the moment the files regarding Commander Holt’s return were uploaded to your servers.”

Artemis raised one finger to signal his own interjection. “Although the hashes were my own idea.”

Commander Short set a flash drive on the table.

“Here are the simulation data from the Lower Elements Police supercomputing array about the Earth’s chances of surviving an assault by the Galra with and without fairy assistance. I don’t understand most of it, but Artemis says that alone, neither the humans nor fairies have a chance.”

“This data has been examined multiple times by fairy data scientists and myself,” Artemis added. “It’s as accurate as fairy technology allows it to be, which means it’s about 75% more accurate than the simulations produced with what is available up here on the surface.”

Commander Iverson picked up the Fowl Industries drive and held it up for examination. “And how do I not know you’re lying? How can I tell that this isn’t some kind of joke with stage makeup and an actress, and some prototype you’ve been working on?” He shook his head. “This is all just too convenient. Even if there were fairies, how would they know English?”

Holly answered the question. “Fairies have magic. In fact, there are theories that our magic might be the same Quintessence that the Galra are seeking. We draw it from the Earth at regular intervals, and it gives us the ability to do certain things, like speak and understand tongues without having knowledge of them. This is Gnommish, the People’s language.”

She spoke a few words in a guttural language that, despite dealing with international staff and recruits, no one in the room could identify.

Holly then demonstrated several other languages, some human, some animal.

“Fairies can also shield.” Holly turned invisible again. She spoke as she walked around the tables before reappearing behind the Garrison delegation. They jumped and spun around. “I’m sure that was self-explanatory.” She walked around to the front again. “We can also heal injuries and  _ mesmerize _ people, essentially forcing them to obey our commands as long as we’re maintaining eye contact with the victim. And if you still think that we’re messing with you, after seeing that, then feel free to take a look at my ears.” Holly walked over to Commander Iverson and looked in his eyes, daring him.

He still tentatively reached out and tugged the end of one of her ears.

“They’re real,” he reported.

Commander Holt looked incredulous. “And you’ve stayed hidden from us for all this time? How?”

“We live underground,” Holly said. “Deeper than humans have ever explored, or will ever explore. Your technology can’t detect ours. When we go above ground, we take precautions and avoid populated areas. And in a pinch, we can use our magic to hide ourselves or make the humans think we were never there.”

“Although there have been some close calls,” Artemis allowed. “The Crash, for example.”

“Your people caused the Crash?” Iverson demanded of Holly.

“We did not cause it!” she snapped. “A madwoman--”

Artemis interrupted her. “The events leading up to the Crash are quite complex, although it’s safe to say they can be attributed to an extremely corrupt lone-wolf businesswoman who engineered the destruction to hopefully lead to the ruin of humankind so that the fairies could retake the surface.”

“That’s putting it nicely,” Holly muttered. 

“I will release my files pertaining to the Crash to the Garrison, if you choose to work with us,” Artemis said, speaking over her. “And possibly more, depending on the agreements made between the fairies and yourselves.”

“And if we don’t agree?” Admiral Sanda asked.

“Then your memories will be wiped and you will forget you ever even received Artemis’s email.” 

“What-?”

“Don’t worry, we don’t do it casually. The technology has definitely improved over the past couple decades, but it’s still time-intensive and involves a lot of planning. Also, I’m not trained to perform it and Artemis wouldn’t be stupid enough to try, knowing who you are and what you represent. So no, even if we had equipment here--which I’m pretty sure we don’t--your memories would be safe.” Holly knew she sounded biting, but she’d come to negotiate a deal, not teach Intro to Fairies, even though Artemis had told her to expect the latter.

Not all Mud Men did their research, after all.

They looked at her with differing expressions. Admiral Sanda’s face resembled a grey rock with its lips pursed together. Commander Iverson looked suspicious. And unnervingly, Commander Holt looked at her like she was a specimen.

It creeped Holly out a little, quite frankly. She’d never liked it when Artemis looked at her that way, and she wasn’t going to accept it from strangers.

Artemis checked his watch. “Well, ladies and gentlemen, I’m sure we all have other business to attend to today. So, we will need a decision, the confirmation of which will come after you have viewed the flash drive at your leisure.”

“And if we refuse then?” Iverson asked.

“The mind wipe will still happen,” Artemis said. “It is absolutely critical that the fairies maintain their secrecy. Hence the EMP shield on the plane. In return, they will keep your secrets and help you build covert defenses against the Galra with technologies more similar to the blueprints Commander Holt returned with than what you’re currently using.” He folded his hands. “Think of it as the symbiotic relationship humans and fairies were meant to have. We keep each other’s secrets and we defend our shared resources with the unique advantages each race brings to the table. After all, humans have the world at their disposal. Fairies have the advanced technologies and knowledge of magic and quintessence to speed up your research and defense efforts.”

The room fell silent. Finally, Commander Holt spoke. “We accept your proposal.”

“Commander Holt, you do not have authorization to make that decision!” Admiral Sanda snapped.

“In this case I do, Admiral. I’ve seen what the Galra can do. I know the limits of our current technologies as they compare to those of other alien species. And I know that we’re going to have to take any advantage we can if we’re going to survive an invasion.”

No one else seemed to know how to respond to that.

“It’s settled,” Commander Iverson said, standing and holding out his hand to Artemis. “We’ll take the deal.”

Artemis didn’t take it. He slipped his hands into his pockets and shrugged. “It’s Commander Short’s hand you should be shaking. I’m simply a liason.”

So although she barely came to his waist, Holly shook Commander Iverson’s hand and looked at him with her mismatched eyes.

Going around the room, she shook the hands of the other humans too. The only person who seemed at all enthusiastic about this was Commander Holt.

Within a day, Artemis had received a reply from the Garrison.

_ We agree to your proposal. _


	4. Chapter 3

Later that month, the Garrison was cleared of all nonessential personnel for the first visit from the fairies. Everyone agreed that moving slower would be better--for the fairies, it meant less chance of their existence being exposed far and wide, and for the humans, it meant less chaos.

This time the fairy delegation was larger--not just Holly but also another elf named Admiral Kelp and a centaur named Foaly. 

No one had quite expected centaurs to exist, despite everything else they’d learned about recently.

Sam took charge on showing them around. He seemed by far the most comfortable with this idea, as weird as it was to everyone else. The idea that there were fairies living right under their feet--and not the cutesy fairies of childhood lore--tended to unnerve most humans who discovered them, save for Artemis Fowl.

Then again, Sam had been to the farthest reaches of space, had been kidnapped by aliens, and had thought he’d never possibly return to earth, so perhaps this was relatively expected by comparison.

The first thing they showed the fairies were the captured ships. Foaly ran his hand over the Galran ship appreciatively. “Survived surface re-entry on multiple planets and not even a scratch on it. Amazing. Maybe only our newest shuttles could do that, and that’s a big maybe.” He trotted over to the Altaean ship. “And how could this even be over ten thousand years old? It’s in pristine condition, no visible wear and tear whatsoever!”

While Foaly cornered Sam and Artemis into a conversation about the technical specs of the alien ships and what the Garrison had gotten to doing with them, Holly peered inside them.

“Actually, these don’t look like they’ll be that difficult to fly,” she told Trouble Kelp, who had joined her next to the cockpit of the Altaean ship. “How many runs in a simulator, do you think, until I get the hang of it?”

Trouble had only opened his mouth to respond when Commander Iverson chuckled behind them. “You want to try a simulator, Commander?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We have a prototype version we’ve been using with our top cadets so that way they’re ready to fly these things the moment we figure out how to get them off the ground. Are you a pilot?”

“Does a troll roll in its own shit?”

Commander Iverson looked taken aback. “Excuse me?”

Trouble decided to intervene. “She was the top pilot in our class at the Academy, sir.”

And to Holly’s relief, Commander Iverson smiled. “Then you’re going to fit right in.”

They excused themselves and hiked over through the scorching Arizona heat to the academic part of the complex, where Commander Iverson showed her to a room full of simulators. Holly took a seat at one of the center consoles and began adjusting the controls to fit her shorter stature.

“Are you sure you can get everything set up okay?” Iverson asked.

“I think so,” Holly said as she pushed her seat as close as it would go to the dashboard.

“Well, let me know when you’re ready to go.”

He headed into the control area with Admiral Kelp.

“Holly is one of the most stubborn people I have ever met,” he told Commander Iverson. “She never gives up a fight. It’s one of her best and worst traits.”

Through the window, they saw Holly give them a thumbs-up.

Commander Iverson started the simulator.

Holly took off and began to experiment with the controls.

“That’s the problem with these jobs. You need the people stubborn enough to fight until the very end, but not too stubborn that they won’t work with anyone else.”

“Lone suicide charges only work in the holo-films, after all.”

“Holo-films?” 

“They’re movies in virtual reality using artificially-intelligent characters and auto-generated environments to let you have control over the plot.”

“You use those for training at all?”

Trouble shrugged. “We’ve been using them for the past couple of years. The problem is always getting the grants to keep them up to date.”

Commander Iverson made an expression that almost looked like a smile. “It’s the same struggle here. Congress can’t see why any of their money should be going to supporting the Galaxy Garrison when it could be training its own people in its own facilities. ‘Course, I expect that will change once the information about Commander Holt is made public--”

“You’re still keeping all of this confidential?”

“We can’t afford to cause a panic.”

“Aren’t there ways to start warning people to prepare without specifically mentioning hostile aliens?”

“Listen, Admiral, it’s up to Admiral Sanda, not me, what happens in regards to the information that this base publishes. And I happen to think that she’s right. We can’t just announce a global threat without plans for how we’re going to handle it.”

Admiral Kelp was going to respond, but Holly’s voice interrupted them over the intercom.

“Come on, you call this a challenge?”

Commander Iverson turned to the controls and grinned. “Just remember that you asked for this.”

Meanwhile, Commander Holt and Foaly were still discussing the mechanics of the ships while Artemis watched thoughtfully. He’d gotten a mechanic to open the ship for them so that its inner workings were exposed.

“Do you think there might be a way for the fairies to recharge the crystal?” Sam asked.

Foaly walked closer and leaned in to examine it. “It would depend on the crystal’s properties,” he concluded. “We’ve come pretty far over the last few decades with the ways we can manipulate magic--but if it’s not organic, we probably can’t transfer magic to it in any meaningful way.”

“Even if magic and quintessence are the same thing?” Admiral Sanda asked.

“We haven’t proven that yet!” Foaly protested. “It could be that magic is not directly quintessence, but diluted in some way. Maybe magic’s more potent than quintessence and would destroy the crystal. There’s no way to tell.”

“You said you would help us.”

“And they will,” Artemis stepped in. “Just as the fairies extended their trust to you to make this visit to see what headway you’ve made on preparing defenses for the Galra, you’ll need to extend your trust to them if you expect them to deliver the innovations and manpower that you’re going to need.”

“What if they take the crystal, Admiral?” Commander Holt asked. “Take it and generate a report about what would be possible. Think about the extra time and cost it would take to transport their equipment and scientists here versus the costs of transporting a single crystal.”

Admiral Sanda didn’t look convinced.

“It’s like Mr. Fowl said. If we want them to trust us, we have to show equal trust in return, or as I understand it, history will become destined to repeat itself at the moment we least need it to.”

Admiral Sanda’s jaw clenched ever so slightly.

A look of remorse flashed across Commander Holt’s features.

Everyone surrounding the pods held their breaths for a moment.

“Fine,” Admiral Sanda muttered. “But if it is not returned--”

“We don’t want to find out,” Foaly said quickly. “Got it.”


	5. Chapter 4

Over the next year, the tentative trust on both sides of the agreement began to solidify as true cooperation began.

Underneath the ground, the best from Section 8, LEPRecon, and LEPRetrieval were drafted into LEPAir, an elite military group of pilots, fighters, and strategists that trained to work with humans on the surface. Meanwhile, Qwan, No. 1, Foaly, and a small army of LEP-employed and privately contracted scientists worked on examining the Altaean schematics and figuring out how to adapt the technology to use it on Earth and how to use magic to replace Quintessence.

On the surface, tunnels beneath the Galaxy Garrison were transformed into a shuttle port with a chute coming off the larger pressure vent E103. Slowly, more fairies trickled into the Garrison, and in the more closed-down sections of the compound devoted exclusively to the Galra threat, became a normal sight for the employees.

Once both sides felt that the other wasn’t trying to take advantage of them, they even started letting their soldiers train together while strategists gathered in conference rooms to work on strategy.

As impossible as alien attacks seemed, as impossible as the coexistence of humans and fairies seemed, these things were happening. History was being made right under everyone’s noses.

And everyone hoped that they would live long enough to see the impact of their hard work.

“The situation is bad out there.”

Artemis Fowl’s blood ran cold.

His younger self would have had no second thoughts about listening in on Matt Holt’s broadcast back to earth and his first conversation with his parents in...months? 

But Artemis had long since grown out of his clinical need to know above all else. As a child, he’d pushed everyone away, only wanting to rely on a family that wasn’t there or couldn’t be there for him. Now, there were more important things than blackmail and controlling all the pawns. He had to rely on others.

Artemis lifted a hand to his earpiece and instructed it to make a call to Foaly.

“Did you get the alert?” he asked.

“Artemis, it’s the middle of the night!” Foaly whispered in exasperation.

“Matt Holt sent a transmission. It’s urgent. Voltron has gone missing and the Galra are taking down its supporters. He requested for Earth to stop broadcasting.”

“To what extent?”

“What do you mean?”

Foaly sighed in annoyance. “Are you that dense? We can’t just stop the world because some aliens might come kill us. Half those things are set up to fight the aliens coming to kill us, for Frond’s sake!”

“Of course we’re not stopping all our satellites now! I’m just telling you--be prepared. Listen to the call, run more simulations to inform your preparations. But do not--do not let the Garrison know that we are still in their systems.”

“Let me guess: you only let them believe that you removed all your bugs or that they found them?”

Artemis didn’t deign to answer that.

“Let me see what I can do and I’ll get back to you in the morning.”

The results from Foaly’s supercomputing array were harrowing.

“Without Voltron, we are dead in the water,” he reported over Artemis’s secure line. And for once, he sounded quite serious. “Chances of planetary survival drop below .5%.”

“Did you test for and against expansion of the Voltron Initiative?”

“Yes. Survival chances are slightly elevated for the expansion simulations in all cases, but the chances of facing major backlash and other social issues--including the chance of a leak regarding our existence--increase exponentially. It makes sense--after all, you can’t lose your minds about fairies and aliens if you die in a catastrophic attack from above before you even know said aliens hit you.”

Artemis thought for a moment. “But is it worth it to try?”

“Answer this question, Artemis: Would you rather die at the happiest moment of your life than afraid, threatened, and confused? And if you think about it that way, some people are going to have that chance to die happy if we keep them ignorant. If we don’t, maybe more people will die confused and afraid. It probably won’t make all that much difference in the long term, and has a chance of seriously throwing a wrench in fairy safety and security in the short term.”

“I’ll need to think about that.” Artemis tapped a finger thoughtfully against his chin.

Artemis’s choice turned out to be immaterial after Colleen Holt made her choice.

Garrison Emergency Broadcasting meant her speech took over every channel on the television and the radio, all around the world.

Even the People watched in their homes beneath the ground with baited breath as she spoke, wondering what her husband had said, if they would betray their new allies so easily.

As security footage from the Garrison’s own cameras flashed across the screen, Artemis found himself impressed. Somewhere, either one of them must have found a vulnerability to allow them to access the archived footage. Clever.

And then...something nobody had known Sam had brought with him. Footage of the Paladins, each wishing their families well with a short message. 

Except for Takashi Shirogane.

Artemis couldn’t help but find that interesting.

Underground, Holly Short felt likewise as she sat on her couch, the food on the TV tray in front of her totally forgotten.

Pounding on the door precluded a hasty end to the broadcast.

Outside, everywhere, there was chaos. New programs interrupted themselves to report on what everyone had just seen.

But some fairies breathed a sigh of relief.

Not the most skeptical, not the most hopeful, but some.

They hadn’t been betrayed.

Instead, fear and panic turned to motions to help. To help those who might otherwise be left behind gather emergency supplies. To remind others that the world still had beauty worth protecting on it and within it. To show that the people of Earth--and the People within Earth--were fighters and wouldn’t just give in at the slightest provocation.


	6. Chapter 5

Two weeks later, by the time everyone had barely regrouped from the fallout of the broadcast the Galra came.

Across the world, strange ships filled the skies.

And then everything humanity had built or treasured over its existence began to be slowly and systematically destroyed.

The soldiers at the Garrison and its various outposts ran for their battle stations, urged on by the loudspeakers.

“Battle plan Beta 5?” Admiral Kelp asked over his intercom from the situation room. “But that wasn’t--”

“What they had planned? Yeah,” Foaly’s voice came over the earpiece. “Looks like Sanda’s going off-script.”

Admiral Kelp switched comms. “LEPAir, stand down. Be at the ready and prepare for future assaults. I repeat, stand down.”

The pilots agreed, though some did so reluctantly.

So Admiral Kelp watched, ready to send his men in at the right moment.

But the right moment never came. Admiral Sanda didn’t issue the commands.

Instead, the situation room witnessed a massacre on screens.

Screens would suddenly blink out and go black as ships were destroyed by the violet lasers slicing the air above them. The noise over the pilots’ comms, all piped through the room, became more frantic and panicked as they tried to communicate with each other, only to find their fellow soldiers dead in the blink of an eye, the remains of their shuttles and fighters falling out of the sky.

Admiral Kelp tried to suppress the perverse relief within himself that the LEP soldiers weren’t in the sky as the pilots’ indicators on the main screen flickered from the Garrison’s orange and white color scheme to an ominous red.

In another situation, perhaps the officers could have fooled themselves into thinking that maybe some of the planes had experienced a technical glitch that had cut them off from the base.

Unfortunately, this situation was dire enough that this couldn’t possibly be the case.

Around the room, the humans’ voices reached a fever pitch as it truly hit everyone just how bad this was.

And from belowground, another word from Foaly came to Admiral Kelp’s ears:

“D’Arvit.”

But everything fell silent when an outside call came through on the Garrison’s main frequency. They let the message ring through three times before a dark-haired Mud Woman answered it on a console.

An alien creature appeared on screen. Although he towered over the people below on the huge screen, Trouble could tell that his armor-covered body was bulky and muscular, like a troll, while he had purple hair growing over his head. His eyes glowed yellow and didn’t have visible irises, nor pupils.

He should have looked ridiculous, but the Galra, who’d just seemed so abstract even in pictures, looked deadly serious.

And that was terrifying.

Now their enemy had a real face in real time, and he had something to say to them.

“I am Commander Sendak of the Fires of Purification,” he growled. “I am here for the Voltron Lions. Turn them over to me or I will destroy your planet.”

There was a moment of silence. People looked around, stunned.

“Open a line,” Admiral Sanda commanded, and the same woman who had accepted the transmission pressed more buttons on her large console. She’d composed herself in almost record time after the massacre.

There was something about her that reminded Trouble of a young Artemis Fowl. She had a similar...air of selfishness? An air of selfishness about her.

He didn’t like it.

“This is Admiral Sanda of Earth. We have received your communication requesting the Voltron Lions. Please be advised that our planet is not harboring them, nor do we know where they are.”

“We’ll see,” Sendak replied, then cut the transmission.

“Tell all Garrison bases to call back fighters,” Commander Holt ordered the woman.

“All Garrison bases are under attack. They’re not responding.’ She paused. “They’ve already scrambled fighters.”

Trouble’s heart plummeted. Any assumptions they’d had about this being a quick conflict vanished.

By the end of the day, massive damage had occurred in every urban area around the globe. Hopeful reports began to come in that maybe the Galra were leaving.

But the number of ships around the Garrison increased dramatically.

It didn’t take a genius to draw conclusions about what was happening.

Commander Holt realized it immediately.

“Scramble the MFE-Area fighters and LEPAir,” he ordered commander Iverson. “And power up the fusion cannons.”

Admiral Kelp turned on the LEPAir comms. “It’s your turn. Get ready.”

Commander Short tightened her grip on the joysticks in her fighter as the elevator brought the Ares and LEPAir planes to the runway. She’d flown this thing--half-modeled on the Altaean pod and half-modeled on the fairy shuttles--a million times before, done combat drills in real life and in the simulator, yet doing this for real shot adrenaline through her bones like nothing before.

The Galra were going down.

“We’re ready to depart on your mark, Commander Iverson,” Griffin’s voice came through the comms.

“Seconded,” Holly answered. “LEPAir is go.”

Commander Iverson counted down, and the fighters rose into the air on his mark, sliding through holes in the particle barrier which resealed behind them.

Holly remembered Artemis having engineered the detection…

She refocused.

A bright light appeared on the hull of the largest Galra ship, growing steadily brighter. 

“Ion cannon charging,” someone reported.

“Everyone out of the way,” someone else responded, and in one coordinated movement, the fighters split away from the particle barrier, going as far out of the way as was safe and strategic.

Holly’s windscreen dimmed accordingly as the light grew ever brighter until it became a beam of pure energy fired at the particle barrier.

It felt like forever that the light focused on the shimmering orange shield. Holly held her breath that it, too, would hold.

“It held!” Foaly crowded in her ear. “Particle barrier stable at 99.5% integrity.”

“Great job,” Holly grunted. She switched comms to LEPAir. “Get the fighters out of the way and protect the Ares group.”

“Thanks, Commander,” Griffin said. “Backup much appreciated.”

“Got it.”

“Fusion cannon preparing for shot,” Admiral Kelp reported through Holly’s comms.”

“Thanks for the heads-up,” Holly said, and checked her HUD to make sure that no one would be in the cannon’s line of fire.

Nope, her people were clear.

Just the Galra in the way now.

Their fighters had put up a good chase, but some just hadn’t been good enough to evade the smaller Ares and LEPAir planes.

Holly didn’t see the first blast, but even without Admiral Kelp’s confirmation, she could tell that they’d done some damage to one of the larger ships. Their fighters stopped engaging and started flying away as the cannon charged a second time.

“Cowards.” Holly muted her mic and muttered to herself.

Trouble watched the map the woman at the communications console had brought up on the screen slowly turn red as they lost communications with Garrison outposts. She called out the names of regions as they turned red.

Finally, for the first time during that harrowing day, her voice shook. “East Coast Base, please respond. Over.” A pause. “East Coast Base?”

The officer next to him had tears running down his face.

“Please?” the woman asked, not even bothering with radio protocol anymore.

But the only sounds from the speakers was static.

Trouble opened a channel with Foaly. “Are we--”

“Still online. Everything not needed for life support is turned off. Total silence except for my channels to you. They’re not going to find a thing unless they start trying to dig a hole through the planet.”

Trouble breathed a sigh of relief. “Good.”

“Keep breathing, Admiral. We’re not out of danger yet.”

On the loft overlooking the room, Commander Holt stepped up to the railing, looking out over the people below--all exhausted, many crying--and although he looked as worn as they did, a glimmer of hope shone in his eyes. 

“The Galra have just dealt us a critical blow.” Commander Holt’s voice resonated through the crowded room. “I know many of you feel that we should press our attack, and believe me when I say that I wish we could. Even with all we’ve accomplished, we’re still not ready to fight the Galra head-on. However, while this base stands, Earth still has a chance. I believe in each and every one of you. You made it here because of your ability to overcome adversity. And now the freedom of planet Earth is dependent on that ability. Everyone break to your sub-commands. I want a full status update of this base. We will prevail.”

There was a moment of silence, then people began breaking off into groups, moving with a renewed purpose.

“We’re fine. Everyone made it out unharmed here, just minor damage to some of the ships.”

“We’re still in contact with the Lower Elements on my end.”

Words like those nearly brought tears to Trouble’s eyes.


	7. Chapter 6

Artemis paced back and forth in the conference room on the Garrison base. Foaly stood at the other end.

“What was she thinking?” Artemis barked at no one in particular. “How many times had she been told to rely solely on normal base capabilities would be suicide? She was lucky we had the particle barrier, and she was lucky that it worked without thorough testing!”

“She’s going to court-martial Holt and Iverson the first chance she gets and send them to international court as traitors,” Foaly reported. “Of course, there’s probably no longer an international court--”

“But the point is moot.” Artemis stopped pacing. His expression turned dark. “She was willing to risk people’s lives rather than admit she was wrong. She is not fit to wage this war.”

“Not that you’re wrong, but there’s no way to get her out of the way without killing her.”

“That’s not exactly right.” Artemis began pacing again. “No, she knows she can’t stop Commander Holt as long as Commander Iverson has his back. So under those conditions, she will let him take the reins until she thinks her lapse of judgement in ordering the Beta-Five protocol has been forgotten. We just have to bide our time and prevent her from making any radical action that would get in Commander Holt’s way. As long as she thinks he’s her puppet, he will run this base.”

“Social engineering is really rather childish of you, Artemis. I thought you outgrew all the lies and deceptions like twenty years ago.”

“I outgrew using them for my own personal gain. Lives are on the line here, Foaly.”

“I know that.”

“Right now you think the fairies are safe. But we don’t know what the Galra are willing to do to achieve their goal.”

Foaly huffed. “Stop patronizing me, Mud Man. You said lives are on the line. Do you really want to mess with the status quo right now?”

Artemis stopped in front of Foaly. “Tell me that you don’t think she wouldn’t sell the People out if it meant she could save her own skin.”

“You would have done the same thing thirty years ago!”

“But I was a child! Sanda is an adult. And even when I had the chance to take advantage of you, I knew enough to stop myself. Are you willing to bet on her having that capability?”

Foaly threw his hands in the air. “You know what? I don’t know. I’m not who I was thirty years ago either, Artemis. I have a wife and kids now. So I don’t know. And it’s not my choice to make. I don’t strategize. I stay in my little box and do what I’m told. It’s what I’m good at. So do whatever you want. But remember that if you mess up, the fallout is your responsibility to clean up. Even if people die.”

And with that outburst, Foaly walked out of the room, his tail flicking as he walked through the automatic doors.

He left Artemis standing inside, stunned.

One week into the siege and the base’s inhabitants began to realize that this would be indefinite.

Commander Holt called a meeting. Veronica, the communications officer, presented the data to everyone. “We only have enough food to last a few months,” she said as she gestured to ration projections on the screen. 

“And construction materials?” Commander Holt prompted before she could go on. “Can we complete the IGF-Atlas?”

“Negative.” 

“Quiznak,” Commander Holt muttered. He raised his voice to a normal level. “It doesn’t matter. Voltron will return. We just need supplies to finish the Atlas and wait out Sendak.”

“The fairies will be able to smuggle supplies into the shuttle port in the tunnels,” Artemis suggested. 

“Not to mention the old supply depot down there,” Veronica added. “It wasn’t collapsed when we built the station and most of what’s in there should still be salvageable.”

“How would we move the supplies?” Admiral Sanda asked.

“The mag-lev system,” Artemis suggested. “There was a train system built in the tunnels for the construction of the shuttle port.”

“What about Galra activity in that area?” Commander Holt asked.

Veronica tapped on her tablet, bringing up satellite visuals of the area above the shuttle port. “None. Their occupation efforts are focused on the major metropolitan areas.”

Artemis’s heart jumped for a moment. His family might still be okay if they had been in the eco-villa back at home.

“But they’re starting to move outward in random patterns. It’s safe to assume they’ve probably begun patrolling.”

Artemis’s heart plummeted again and he pushed the thoughts of his brothers away.

“Does the operation put the People at risk?” Commander Holt asked.

“No. All shuttle ports have been evacuated following the invasion. No one should be in the tunnels.”

“Then we’ll move fast,” Commander Holt decided. “Put together a team. They’ll leave after nightfall.”

As she rode with the cadets to the depot in the cruiser, Holly couldn’t help but feel chills run up and down her spine. Everything felt too empty, too dark, too silent. 

Bad things tended to hide in empty shuttleports. 

She wished someone else would start talking, but the only conversation came when she gave directions at an intersection and Cadet Kincade gave them the all-clear from his post atop the vehicle with a sniper rifle.

Thankfully, it didn’t take them long to reach their destination.

“Everybody out,” Holly ordered, and the group did as she asked. “Leifsdottir, Kincade, keep an eye out here.”

“Got it,” Kincade said, and jumped off the top of the cruiser. Leifsdottir didn’t say anything, just pulled her weapon from its holster.

“The rest of you are coming with me to load the train.” Holly walked over to the metal door and placed her hand on the scanner. At eye level, a retinal scanner slipped out of a spot in the wall.

“Please identify yourself.”

“Commander Holly Short.”

“Welcome, Commander Short.”

The metal door slid open.

“Was that fairy language?” Rizavi asked. 

“Yeah, it’s called Gnommish,” Holly explained as she used the flashlight on her weapon to sweep the space. 

“It looks like an airport in here,” Griffin observed.

“How’d you learn English?” Rizavi continued in a whisper as they followed the mag-lev tracks back to where the trains were housed.

“Magic,” Holly muttered. “Now let’s get this thing running, get to the supply depot, and get home for dinner.”

“Amen,” Griffin replied as Holly went through the sequence to open the garage. The door slid up into the ceiling, revealing a sleek, floating train. 

“Neat!” Rizavi exclaimed.

“How’s it going to carry all the stuff?” Griffin asked.

“It’s got flatbed cars for transporting construction materials,” Holly said as she went to grab a wheeled staircase and pushed it up to the train door. “Hop in.”

Rizavi and Griffin contorted themselves into the compartment meant for a species much smaller than themselves.

Commander Short took the controls and pulled the train out of the shuttleport. She jumped out to close the door and issue orders to Leifsdottir and Kincade.

“You two take the cruiser,” she said. “Keep an eye out for the train.”

“Got it,” Kincade said.

It was smooth sailing to the supply depot and they managed to get most of the supplies loaded and tied down before Griffin called in. “We have company just south of the cruiser,” he reported.

“Coming,” Holly reported over the local comms. “Kincade, finish loading the train.”

She, Rizavi, and Leifsdottir quickly took cover near Griffin as Kincade slipped back into the depot. Griffin gestured towards where the Galra sentries were walking through the tunnels towards them.

Holly met Griffin’s eyes. They exchanged a nod.

Griffin rose from behind the concrete barrier lining the mag-lev tracks and fired several shots with his rifle before ducking back down as Leifsdottir seamlessly resumed where he’d left off.

Holly had to admit, she was impressed by the kids. At their age, she would have charged straight in without a thought to strategy or her team, but they moved like a well-oiled machine, and Holly jumped in when she recognized their patterns.

“Our weapons aren’t doing anything!” Griffin shouted 

And it was true. Their lasers couldn’t touch the metal sentries.

Except...what if…

Sometimes you had to do things the old fashioned way. Smashing a computer could take it down just as well as any virus.

“Cover me!” she shouted.

Holly extended her wings from her pack and pulled a small cylinder from her belt. Snapping her wrist, she extended her buzz baton to its full length and powered it on. “Focus them away from me,” she added, then shielded.

Holly launched herself into the air and flew over the cadets, looping around behind the sentries and touching down silently. She crept towards them, making sure to stay out of the line of fire as much as possible. 

One, two taps with the buzz baton and the sentries collapsed into humanoid, mechanical heaps.

Holly unshielded.

She heard something behind her and turned. The red lights that adorned the sentries glowed in the darkness of the tunnel, coming from the same direction as their buddies whom she had just zapped.

Holly tried to count them, but there were too many and they advanced too quickly.

“D’Arvit.”

Holly had another idea.

“We can still move the supplies!” she shouted. Her suit computer was integrated into a gauntlet on her left arm. Quickly, Holly pressed the release for the arm guard and took off into the air, turning towards Griffin.

“Catch!”

He dove for the device and barely caught it before it hit the pavement.

“Plug it into the console, say ‘English’ until it starts talking to you in English, get the autopilot running, and follow the maps!”

“But what about--”

“You’re not stupid, Griffin!”

By now, Holly shouted instructions as she dodged laser bolts from the oncoming sentries, trying to get close enough to hit them with the buzz baton.

Looks like those old electric stun guns would be coming back again.

A bolt clipped Holly’s shoulder and her magic immediately rose to repair the bruising. She tried shielding again, but the hive mind had wised up and continued shooting like nothing had happened. 

This was a hot mess.

“Commander Short!” Griffin shouted from the train. It was moving away from her.

“I’ll meet you!” Holly told him over her comms. “Just get the supplies back!”

But the tunnels hadn’t been designed to withstand combat within them, especially not sustained combat with high-powered laser weapons.

With all the sentries aiming at Holly in the air, they’d been shooting at the roof of the tunnel, which bore the weight of thousands of pounds of earth above it

It took only took one laser to hit the right weak spot and the cavern came crashing down.

“You’re back!” Commander Holt exclaimed as he ran down the stairs to the station underneath the Garrison. Admiral Sanda and Commander Iverson followed him.

Slowly, the cadets disembarked from the train.

Commander Holt’s face fell.

“Where’s Commander Short?” he asked cautiously.

None of the cadets spoke for a moment.

“She didn’t make it,” Rizavi whispered, her eyes fixed on the ground. She held out the deep green child-sized gauntlet in one hand. “Here’s her suit computer.”

Commander Holt took the gauntlet and clutched it in one hand. He took a steadying breath before speaking again. “Her sacrifice was not in vain. She gave us a chance. We’re not going to waste it.”

In his room, Artemis cradled Holly’s suit computer in his hands.

He hadn’t even had a chance to talk to her before the mission.

Now she was gone. Just like that.

He honestly didn’t feel anything. His body felt numb and his mind felt like it was encased in cotton.

He was almost certain her death would hit him later.

His parents’ hadn’t hit him until later, after all.

Commander Holt had said the tunnel she was inside had collapsed. That’s what the cadets saw as they left on the train.

The train Holly had planned to drive back to them.

A small, dark part of him wished it had been one of the cadets instead.

That same night the attacks on the satellites started.


	8. Chapter 7

Foaly had been sending his wife and children short videos every night--just something fun for them before they’d go to work or school the next day, joking about the humans or whatever.

But today had been a dark day.

Holly had gone missing.

Foaly refused to accept that the tunnel collapse had killed her.

Holly had been in tighter spots and had escaped just fine. The problem would be getting her back to their base. 

A problem made harder by the fact that the video wouldn’t send. Which was ridiculous. His computer was a custom make, and he’d designed so not even a Faraday cage could stop it from working. 

Weird.

Well, once something like this caught Foaly’s attention, he couldn’t let it go.

He powered the machine off and cleared off the desk, putting the tower front and center so he could take it apart. Using a handheld diagnostic tool of his own design, Foaly checked anything that might be impacting the connectivity. But everything came up clean.

So it couldn’t be his computer. Not possible.

Foaly put in his earpiece. “Commander Holt,” he said, opening a private connection.

But Commander Holt declined, leaving Foaly listening to a busy signal in his ear.

Fine. He’d have to do this himself. 

“They took out our communications satellites,” Veronica told Foaly after he’d managed to track down someone who knew what was going on. “We still have LAN and fiber capabilities, but any sort of communication outside the base is out of the question. We’re in the dark now.”

Foaly sighed. “Thanks, Veronica. I suspected the satellites--but not to this extent.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t do it earlier.”

“What do you mean?”

“They wouldn’t want us to attempt to alert Voltron, would they? But we have been, and they didn’t worry about it until now. Maybe they made a mistake by doing that.”

“But the Galra want Voltron. Maybe they let us transmit for all this time so that Voltron would know things are bad, and took out the satellites to make Voltron think things are that much worse…” Something occurred to Foaly. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t still let them know that this could be a trap.”

“What do you mean?” Veronica asked.

Foaly reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “You might not know it yet, but you’re a genius. And that’s high praise coming from me.”

Artemis was startled out of his numb reverie by the pounding on his door.

He opened it to find Foaly standing on the other side.

“The Ice Cube plans. Do you still have them?”

Artemis stared at him for a moment. “Are you serious?”

“Totally.”

Artemis moved out of the way so Foaly could enter the room, then Artemis shut the door behind him. “Holly is missing and possibly dead and you want to know what happened to the plans for the stupid prototype I built when I was seventeen?”

“Yes.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“Have you tried to connect to anything outside the LAN within the past few hours, Artemis?”

A skeptical look crossed Artemis’s face. “No. Why?”

“The Galra took out our satellites.”

Artemis didn’t reply to that, but instead sat down at his computer and tried to get through to the backdoor in Foaly’s remote computers. There was no network connection.

“I’m not making this up, you know.”

Artemis rubbed one hand across his temple. “Could this day get any worse?”   
Foaly didn’t answer that. “Where are the plans?”

“The old Fowl Manor servers.”

Foaly sighed in frustration.

“What was your plan?” Artemis asked.

“Well, if we shoot something large into the sky, the Galra will shoot it down. But if we shoot a lot of really small things into the sky, they’ll be harder to take out. I was thinking, we use a cannon like the Ice Cube and shoot microtransmitters into the sky to restore the satellite networks as much as we can.”

Artemis looked lost in thought.

“Hey. Holly sacrificed herself to get the supplies so we could keep going. We can’t just let it go to waste because we’re not here. What do you think she’d say to that?”

A small smile crossed Artemis’s face. “She’d throw something at us and tell us to get to work.”


	9. Chapter 8

Months passed.

And then something happened.

The intercom beeped in the nanotechnology lab, signaling an incoming message. “Mr. Fowl, come to the hanger at once. Over.”

Artemis crossed the room and tapped the button with one gloved hand. “I’m on my way. Over.”

Quickly, Artemis made sure that his assistants knew what they needed to do before stepping out of the lab and removing his gear before jogging to the glass-encased elevator and descending to the lowest level of the compound.

Humans and fairies stood together in a large group several yards from the base of the elevator. A majority of the people wore Garrison uniforms, but some of the group wore ratty civilian clothes. Boxes, bags, dollies, and carts had been abandoned around the outside of the group like someone had put them down in a hurry.

The mag-lev train, the one that Holly had intended to use to make a supply run on the day she went missing, still sat in the terminal. Artemis didn’t want to look at it.

Artemis stepped out of the elevator only to be knocked back as a diminutive figure launched itself at him.

“Holly?” Artemis exclaimed as he used one hand to catch himself on the elevator.

“Took you long enough.”

Artemis pushed himself away from the wall and hugged her back. She smelled like the earth, and smoke, and gunpowder, but she was here, and she was alive. It was more than a miracle and Artemis could barely believe it.

“How did you survive?” Artemis asked, keeping one hand on her shoulder after she dropped to the ground.

“I found a resistance group,” she said, nodding towards the group of humans dressed in ratty, mismatched outfits. Holly tugged off her hood. “I tricked them into thinking I was a human until they trusted me. They know a lot and they brought supplies.”

The elevator opened behind them again, and another person nearly knocked Artemis to the side as they ran out. 

Veronica had plowed past him, running at full-tilt towards the humans in the resistance group. She began hugging several people.

“Mom! Dad! Luis! Marco! I can’t believe you’re here!”

Commander Holt joined Artemis and Holly, smiling at Veronica’s reunion with her family. A few minutes later, she ran back to where they stood and knelt down to wrap Holly in a bear hug. She’d been crying, but a genuine smile crossed her face. “Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Holly blushed. “Hey, it wasn’t all me.”

“Yes, but you brought them back. You brought my family back to me, and I don’t know how I’ll ever thank you for that.” Veronica gave Holly one last hug before returning to her family.

Holly lowered her voice and spoke to Artemis. “How much do you know about what’s going on outside the Garrison now that the networks are down?”

“What’s happening?” Commander Holt asked.

“They’re sorting the humans into work camps. We don’t know what they’re building yet, but they’re definitely doing construction. Everything outside is changing. Society is beginning to break down.”

A dark cloud settled over Artemis’s expression as thoughts of his brothers and the Butlers crossed his mind once again. He hoped they were safe, but in these situations, you could never know.

Commander Holt turned to Artemis. “Would it be possible to modify the microtransmitters to broadcast a message to space?”

“Microtransmitters?” Holly asked.

Artemis thought for a moment, then nodded. “It might push the schedule back by a few weeks, but it should be something we can do.”

“Get it done, then. The faster the better.”

Almost three months later, the rocket with the microtransmitters launched.

And just as Artemis had predicted, the Galra destroyed it the moment it left Earth’s atmosphere. The chain reaction from the laser jump-started the motors on the microtransmitters, which began to communicate with each other to form a network over Earth.

And within hours, the transmission began.

“To any beings who receive this message, planet Earth has been overrun by Galra. Most of the citizens have been captured. Those of us remaining are making our last stand. If you get this message, please get word to Voltron. We need help.”

Weeks passed before the fairy deep space probes began to transmit abnormal data.

Energy, similar yet different from what the Galra ships emitted, had entered the galaxy.

They were also picking up a transmission signal.

“Dad?” A feminine voice crackled through the speakers, harsh and distorted. But not even the signal decay could remove the hope from her voice.

Every one of the officers in the room turned to watch Commander Holt. The smile on his face practically glowed.

“Voltron...coming…” The static grew more intense, and the smile on the Commander’s face winked out like a candle in the wind.

“Katie? Katie, is that you?” Commander Holt asked.

“Dad! I’m here!”

“I’m so glad to hear your voice again,” he said warmly. “Where are you?”

“Within the Solar System. Heading to Earth now.”

“You have to stop.”

Another voice, this one male, joined the conversation. “What was that?”

“Stop,” Commander Holt pleaded. “Sendak has invaded Earth. If you come, he will threaten the people in exchange for the lions.”

The transmission ended.

Commander Holt looked conflicted.

Admiral Kelp turned back to his work.

A few hours later, a Galra ship crashed about ten miles out from the dome.

Ares and LEPAir were sent to take it by force, and they loaded into cruisers with the same speed they’d gotten their planes ready to fly during the first Galra assaults.

“You ever miss it?” Holly asked Admiral Kelp over the comms while they drove.

“We’re all getting older,” he replied. “And I always liked planning more than I liked fighting.”

“You’re taking Foaly’s job now.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be Foaly. Hell, I don’t want to be Foaly. I want to still be able to kick your butt in training after all this is through.”

Holly smirked. “Keep dreaming.”

They parked their cruisers near the abandoned wreck of Plaht City after Trouble got Foaly to focus a microtransmitter on the ship’s inhabitants.

“They’re not Galra,” Trouble said. “Their armor is different and they’re traveling with a dog. I don’t think the Galra use animals in their strategy yet.”

“Should we go in yet?”

“Wait.”

“Now! Galra sentries and drones are converging on the Paladins!” Trouble shouted.

Holly leaned her torso out of the passengers’ side window of her cruiser, issuing orders to the rest of her group. “You heard him! Let’s move!”

But it was harder to get through Plaht City than they’d planned. The urban landscape had significantly degraded since they’d last mapped it, and more roads had become blocked by fallen buildings and other debris. Not to mention the Galra drones that crawled out of the ruins like termites from woodwork.

Thankfully, while Holly had been away, both fairy- and human-designed weapons had been reinforced and now better penetrated Galra armor. It was like weilding a Neutrino on steroids, and Holly loved every minute of it.

When they finally saw the Paladins, the heroes were locked in a firefight with the drones and a Galra sentry.

“Hit it, Griffin!” Holly commanded, and Griffin did exactly that. His cruiser rammed into the sentry and slammed it into a wall, turning its torso to tinfoil.

The Paladins paused, surprised by the unexpected guests. Rizavi swung their cruiser around and retracted the top, and Holly leapt out, joining Kincade and Leifsdottir in taking out the drones.

Once the last few had been shot to scrap metal, the Paladin in the red armor looked rather annoyed. “We had those!” he protested.

“Drones send distress signals when they’re attacked. Our weapons disable those signals. More of the drones will already be converging on our location. Unless you’re in the mood for a seige, we need to get out of here,” Griffin explained tersely.

The Paladins complied when told to get in the cruisers.

“Pull around front.” Trouble’s voice carried through the speakers in Holly’s helmet, and she looked over at Rizavi, who nodded and indicated that she’d heard the message too.

The Paladins had split up between the three cruisers, and drove through the compound, single-file.

A welcoming party stood outside the Garrison. The Holts and their dog. Lance’s family. Several other commanders and Garrison personnel stood by too.

Lance and Pidge ran straight for their families. The rest of the group followed them out.

It was hard not to be happy when so much joy filled the bleak atmosphere.

But the Paladins whose families weren’t present went straight to talk to Commander Iverson.

It was then Holly noticed that, apart from the strange dog, three of their companions weren’t human. They had colored markings on their faces and pointed ears. If they’d been short, Holly might have mistaken them for elves with an odd fashion sense.

But instead they stood over six feet tall.

“Officer Shirogane. It’s great to see you again,” Commander Iverson said formally. “My apologies for throwing you in quarantine the last time we met.”

The alien with the red hair and ridiculous moustache marched right up to Iverson. “So you strapped Shiro to a table. I heard about that.”

Thankfully, Shiro himself defused the situation. “He was just following orders, like a good soldier.” After the redheaded man backed off, Shiro smiled. “It’s good to see you too. Allow me to introduce you to our Altaean allies, Allura, Romelle, and Coran.”

“The pleasure is mine,” Iverson answered with a smile. “And let me introduce you to some of our allies, the Fairy People of Earth. This is Commander Short, Captain Kelp, and Major Verbil.”

Holly walked over next to Iverson. The other men joined her.

The Paladins looked surprised, but that was understandable. They’d left before the fairies had joined the Garrison.

“They heard about the Galra threat through hacking our bases,” Iverson explained, “and offered their support. This is the first large scale collaboration between humans and fairies in several thousand years.”

“Woah,” Pidge said quietly. Her eyes were wide behind her glasses.

Holly felt like a specimen in a science experiment.

“Wait. How have fairies been on Earth all this time without anyone noticing?” Lance asked. “It sounds kinda hard to just hide a whole civilization.”

“We live deep underground,” Holly answered. 

Meanwhile, Commander Iverson had turned to talk to Keith for a moment. 

Holly looked around at everyone smiling and talking and laughing.

Maybe things were starting to come together after all.


	10. Chapter 9

Although it took ages, Commander Holt finally managed to get all the relevant personnel into the room for a debriefing.

Commander Holt and Veronica pulled up the data regarding the occupation of Earth and displayed it, discussing what had happened since Commander Holt’s return.

But the all the Paladins could do was as why the Garrison couldn’t do more. Why can’t they fight back? Why can’t they save more people?

Finally, one of the Ares pilots had enough. “Don’t Paladins understand the chain of command?” Griffin snapped at Hunk. “Your commanding officer said no.”

“Enough, Cadet,” Commander Holt admonished him before apologizing to Hunk. “We all have family out there. And we would save them if we could. But we can’t lose ten people just to save twelve.”

“But we can do something about Sendak, can’t we?” Allura asked, standing up behind Hunk. “Didn’t you mention the responsibility of the fairies was to upgrade Earth’s technology so that it might be compatible with Altaean tech?”

In the back of the room, Foaly clapped his hands loudly. “Right you are, Space Girl. And boy have we got some cool stuff to show you.”

As they made their way down to the underground hangar, Allura looked at Foaly with confusion. 

“Is that man part-Kaltenecker?” she asked Lance quietly.

“No, I think that’s part horse.”

“Horse?”

“They’re like, kinda like a Kaltenecker, but we don’t drink their milk and you can ride them…” Upon seeing Allura’s lack of comprehension, Lance paused. “Maybe I can find a picture or something later.”

“So, is he a human or a fairy?”

“Definitely fairy.”

Foaly turned around, one eyebrow raised. “I can hear you, you know.”

Sam and Foaly lead the group across the workshop, pointing out different projects, prototypes, and pieces of technology that had been developed recently.

They first walked past the Mecha-Flex-Exo fighters and the Mini-MFEs, Commander Holt and Foaly both explaining how they worked to the point of talking over each other.

“However, sustaining power in anything integrating Altean technology has so far proven to be a challenge,” Sam explained.

“But the People have discovered that magic can be infused into Altaean crystals with the intervention of a demon warlock, so that’s step one,” Foaly added. “Step two is synthesizing a crystal big enough to power one of these suckers for an extended period of time.”

“Have you tried Faunatonium?” Coran asked.

“Do I want to?” Foaly asked.

“Not really, as it has some unexpected side effects, but it just might be the thing to get your ships off the ground.”

Foaly pretended to consider this. “We’ll pass.”

Commander Holt then showed them to the largest structure in the hangar: a battleship modeled off of, and integrating, human, fairy, and Altaean technology.

“It’s built, but it can’t fly,” Commander Holt said.

“Which means it’s basically a pretty statue right now,” Foaly muttered.

Holly poked him in the flank.

But before Commander Holt could continue, Admiral Sanda pushed her way to the front of the group. “Everyone, there’s a subject we cannot avoid any longer,” she announced. “Sendak attacked Earth because he wanted the lions. Now that they’re here, we should at least be discussing our options for how to proceed.”

Shiro looked like he couldn’t quite believe her. “Are you suggesting we just hand the lions over to the Galra?”

She gestured around her, her lips pressed into a thin line. “Look around us. Our supplies are dwindling. We can’t mount an attack. All of our resources are going to support ships that don’t fly and we’ll only kill ourselves more quickly if we mount a rescue attempt.”

“If you reopened the shuttle port, we could have the People smuggle supplies and materials in and out,” Commander Short said.

“It’s too dangerous now that the Galra are in the tunnels.”

“Then we can install DNA or MAC cannons and take down their electronics and their people the second they enter the tunnel,” Admiral Kelp added. He folded his arms. “We can’t help you if you don’t let us, Admiral.”

“Enough!” Sanda snapped. “Right now, bargaining the Lions may be the least risky choice!”

“No!” Commander Holt snapped. “Earth needs them!”

“Millions are dying by the day because we can’t stop this!” Sanda’s fists clenched by her sides. “What are we supposed to try?”

“Perhaps something which doesn’t go against the projections and the psychological profiles which I have shown you multiple times,” Artemis said calmly, quietly, and the group turned to look at him. “Please think before you speak, Admiral. I hate repeating myself.”

“Mr. Fowl, you will speak to officers with respect while you are a civilian at this base!”

Artemis didn’t acknowledge her statement, not giving her the satisfaction.

“He’s right,” Allura said, glancing over her shoulder at Artemis. “You can’t negotiate with Sendak. If he pretends to work with you, he will betray you as soon as he has what he wants.”

“And you, Princess, should leave the matters of Earth to the people of Earth.” Admiral Sanda calmed for a moment. “Right now, our only solution to this problem is to give Sendak the lions. If you can give me concrete intelligence that Sendak can be defeated another way, I will consider it. Not projections. Intelligence. Do you understand?”

The group murmured unhappily.

Allura’s eyes widened. “Wait, Commander--I believe that we do have intelligence! Is the data from the Castle of Lions here?”

Commander Holt didn’t look like he knew what she was talking about. “Yes, why?”

“Sendak’s memories might be in that data.”

“And what good are his memories?” Sanda asked.

“It might give us some insight into how Sendak’s going to do this,” Pidge explained.

“And allow us to potentially find patterns to exploit,” Artemis added. 

Admiral Sablan was the one who showed the Holts, Allura, Foaly, and Artemis to the supercomputing laboratory. While orderly server racks filled most of the room, a holographic display table sat, ready for interfacing directly with the data.

“We had to beef this thing up after the Galra took out the Internet because we could no longer access the Lower Elements Police supercomputing cluster,” Foaly explained. “Thankfully, most of the humans here are pretty competent when told what to do.”

He, Artemis, and Pidge got to work, while Commander Holt answered Allura’s questions about the technology in the room. She seemed fixated on the prosthetic limbs hanging on one wall.

“I designed these to help injured soldiers. Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten them to work yet, and I’ve had to shelve the project to focus on the Galra.”

“Shiro--”

Allura was interrupted by Pidge’s victorious shout. “Found them!”

“But they’re still just code until we find a way to interpret them,” Artemis reminded her. “And still in Altaean,” he muttered to himself as he scrolled through the symbols on his screen.

“Yeah, we might not be able to actually use these anytime soon,” Foaly said, stroking his chin. “Good try, guys.”

Allura walked over from the wall of prosthetics, her every movement somehow graceful. She put both hands on the desk and leaned down to look at Pidge’s monitor. “Actually, I think I might have a way to fix this. Commander Holt, do you still have the schematics from the Castle of Lions?”

Holly met Admiral Kelp in the armory to prepare for their patrol. As they slid on body armor over their suits and signed out their weapons, they made quiet, familiar conversation.

“You ready to finally get out of here?” Holly asked.

“As much as someone needs to do the important stuff back at base--someone that’s not Foaly--I miss Recon,” Admiral Kelp said, strapping on his helmet. “There’s just something about flying through the cool night air with magic buzzing in your veins that you don’t feel anywhere else.”

Holly sighed as she checked her gear. “Unfortunately it just doesn’t feel like it used to with all the pollution.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Admiral Kelp ended the reminiscing by checking his suit display. “Time to head out.”

Holly spotted movement as she started the cruiser.

She turned on the headlights and caught two figures straight in the beams. “Hey! You!”

The two figures turned. Clearly, they had thought the area would be abandoned this late in the evening, as they’d tried to sneak straight through the middle of the hangar. Idiots. They were obviously two Paladins, as the figures wore white armor made of the strange Altaean alloy with colored accents--the tall, slim figure had red on his armor, and the bulkier one had yellow.

“What are you doing here?”

“None of your business,” the red one said. “Just let us out of the particle barrier.”

Admiral Kelp crossed his arms. “What do you think, Commander, should we let Earth’s last hope stumble into a Galra ambush and kill themselves?”

“Wasn’t going to,” Holly said. 

Admiral Kelp motioned to them. “Well, hop in anyway.”

“What?”

“This is a low-risk operation. The sooner we learn how they work and the sooner they learn how we work, the sooner we can develop useful strategies playing to both of our strengths.”

Holly sighed, but bit her lip. Many years of dealing with Artemis had shown her that she didn’t really like it when people tagged along on her missions.

Too much danger. Too much risk.

“Hop in,” she grumbled, starting the engine.

They left the cruiser just outside the city inside an abandoned-looking garage. “Foaly designed it,” Holly explained as the dented and beaten blast-proof door slid silently into place. “Looks like a dump, emits no radio signals, but is blast-proof and can function as a command center in a pinch.”

“Cool,” Hunk, the one with the yellow accents on his suit, said, peering at the equipment lining the walls.

“It’s definitely helped us out more than once,” Admiral Kelp said.

Holly turned on her suit projector and pulled up Foaly’s Galra Detector. Something immediately caught her attention. “There’s no Galra here,” she said, pointing to a spot on the hologram.

Admiral Kelp examined the map. “Must be some sort of glitch.”

“How does that map work?” Keith asked.

“It uses DNA detection and identification of the origin points for Galra radio frequencies,’ Holly explained. “And right now it’s being stupid.”

Keith paused for a moment, then took a deep breath before he spoke. “It might not be wrong. I’m half-Galra.”

Holly and Admiral Kelp blinked at him.

“I’m not a spy--”

“We never said you were,” Holly said. “Just that you’re throwing off the stupid Galra finder.” She turned off the projection. “Whatever. Foaly can tell us what to do.”

“Foaly’s working with Commander Holt right now, and I’m here, not back at the command station. We’re on our own,” Admiral Kelp replied.

Holly shrugged one shoulder. “It’s not the worst situation I’ve ever been in.”

Admiral Kelp shook his head as Holly used her thumbprint to open an equipment cabinet. She handed two earpieces to the Paladins. “That way we can still talk if we get separated. Do you have weapons?”

Keith nodded.

“Then let’s go,” Admiral Kelp said, pressing a button before walking right through one of the walls.

“Woah,” Hunk said. 

They headed into the city on foot.

“We’re looking for people that need rescued, new resistance cells that the Garrison may be able to help, and any sign of what the Galra have planned,” Admiral Kelp explained through the Paladin’s earpieces. “Almost everyone with combat training is required to do this every so often, so expect to be dragged in at some point.”

The group walked in silence until they hit the empty streets.

“It’s so creepy” Hunk whispered into the comms.

They made their way through the empty streets, weapons drawn. Admiral Kelp lead them on a twisted path through buildings, subway tunnels, and alleyways. For at least twenty minutes, they didn’t encounter another soul.

“It shouldn’t be this quiet,” Holly muttered.

Something buzzed above them.

“D’Arvit!” Admiral Kelp hissed. “Drones!”

Laser blasts followed their footsteps as the Paladins and fairies ran for shelter--after all, they’d long since figured out that the mechanical eyes didn’t care about shielding.

Hunk reached a shop door first and yanked it open. “In here!” He turned his gun on the drones and began to shoot them out of the sky.

Holly herded everyone in and pulled a charge from a pocket on her belt, practically pushing Hunk through the door. “Move! Move! Move!” she shouted. “Close your eyes!”

The group huddled behind the counter, on which the remains of two looted cash registers sat, and just as Holly slid underneath, a flash of light bright enough to shine like the sun through their eyelids filled the room.

When the light faded, they opened their eyes. “We have a minute before that thing stops sending out signals that mess with Galra frequencies, so let’s go,” Holly said, standing and sticking something into the lock on the back door, which clicked and swung open.

Admiral Kelp consulted his suit computer. “There’s a manhole down the block.” 

They made their way back towards the fairy shelter at the edge of town through the sewers, guided by Admiral Kelp and the map.

“It should be safe to come out now,” Holly said, pointing to a spot on the hologram. “I don’t want to get trapped again.”

“Are the Galra in the sewers?” Hunk asked nervously. “Please don’t tell me the Galra are in the sewers.”

“They’ve been known to patrol down here,” Admiral Kelp confirmed. 

“Aw, darn,” Hunk muttered.

They walked a few hundred more feet until they encountered a drain covered by a grate. Three ladders lead up to the hole, and moonlight illuminated the soldiers hiding beneath the road.

Everyone held their breath and listened intently.

A tense minute passed.

“I think we’re clear,” Admiral Kelp whispered. But as he reached up to push the grate out of the way, footsteps approached.

The fairies shielded.

A brighter light dispelled the last of the shadows from within the grate and Keith put an arm up to shield his eyes from the sudden brightness. The Paladins’ armor didn’t seem to automatically adjust to changes in lighting like the fairies’ did.

The angle of the light changed so that it no longer blinded them. Instead, it revealed the figure standing over them to be an older man in a mismatched outfit that had seen better days.

“Paladins. Come with me,” he said. “Quickly.”

Hunk and Keith followed the man outside the city to a lone cabin overlooking a quarry that had been filled with Galra equipment.

They only knew the fairies were following them from the chatter in their earpieces.

“We’re above you. Don’t worry.”

“We can’t go in the cabin uninvited. Don’t worry, we’ll be right outside.”

“We’ll hear everything through your mics.”

“We’re hidden just outside the cabin. If anything happens, we can be there in an instant.”

It was actually really distracting.

But kind of nice to know that they hadn’t just been abandoned.

“This is amazing,” the man kept saying. “I didn’t dare believe that the rumors were true! Finally, we have a chance! Finally! The resistance has been absolutely revitalized by the Paladins’ return,” he explained. “More are willing to join us when they hear! Thank you!”

He enthusiastically shook their hands.

“From the way he’s talking, you’d think these guys were Jesus,” Admiral Kelp whispered.

Hunk ignored him. “Thank you for your help. It’s good to know that people still have hope. We want the Galra gone just as badly as you do.”

“Oh, this is so good! So good to hear!”

But a large window whose glass had long since shattered had drawn Keith’s attention. He leaned out, looking below them. “What’s this?”

Hunk and the man joined them. 

“It’s where they’ve taken the prisoners,” the man explained. “They’re mining ore for Sendak. No one knows what they’re building, but if they aren’t building, then why do they want the ore? It’d be kind of ridiculous, right?”

“That is not a good sign,” Admiral Kelp said. “Commander Short, are you recording?”

“Already done.”

“Right,” Keith said awkwardly after a second. “Well, thank you for the information--”

Hunk interrupted him. “Can we get a better look at what they’re doing down there?”

The man walked to a table, grabbed a pair of binoculars, and handed them to Hunk. “Here.”

Hunk scanned the quarry. From everyone else’s point of view at the top of the cliff, the people at the bottom of the ditch were mere ants, their equipment smaller than children’s toys. The color of their clothing couldn’t even be determined. But Hunk watched them intently for a minute before he gasped.

“I see them! My parents!”

“There’s no way we’re getting them out tonight. Not without a plan,” Admiral Kelp interjected.

Keith shook his head.

Hunk turned to the man. “We’re coming back for these people. We might not be able to get them out tonight, but we will rescue them. Count on that.”

Inside the Garrison, Artemis, Foaly, and Pidge had managed to figure out how to best translate the memories under Allura’s directions. For a woman raised to be a political heiress, she had a wide variety of skills and knowledge, and whatever she didn’t know, she wanted to learn. Artemis spent at least as much time explaining Earth’s different computer systems to her as he did actually building the projection.

Finally, Pidge did the honors. A life-sized version of Sendak sprang to life on the table. If not for the high ceiling in the server room, he would have been decapitated.

For a moment, everyone stared in a mixture of amazement and awe. Amazement that it had worked, and awe at Sendak’s size.

Once Pidge’s parents arrived, the questioning began. Artemis took the opportunity to sit back and watch. They peppered Sendak with questions.

Foaly spoke up. “What if a planet contained civilizations you didn’t know about?”

“It would make no difference,” the hologram said. “They too would eventually fall, and their resources would go to support the Galra.”

An idea struck Artemis. “Would the Galra hesitate to use dishonest means and deceit to conquer a planet?”

“Absolutely not. We will do whatever needs to be done to preserve the empire.”

Foaly looked at Artemis. But he had what he needed.

Artemis cornered Commander Holt later that night.

“Admiral Sanda is not going to act in the Earth’s best interest,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard what Sendak said back there. From everything the Paladins have told us, from the evidence provided by the Castle of Lions’ logs, everything points towards the Galra taking the lions and destroying Earth anyway. They are not to be trusted, yet Admiral Sanda wants to trust them.”

“What’s your point, Mr. Fowl?”

“Something needs to be done. Some kind of appeal must be made for her to step down from inside the Garrison, otherwise I fear things will go very wrong the second the Paladins believe it feasible to reclaim their lions.”

Commander Holt’s brow furrowed. “You’ve come in as a liaison and a contractor, not a strategist, Mr. Fowl. Whatever I happen to think of Admiral Sanda, it’s not my job to act on those feelings.”

Artemis shrugged and turned to walk away. “I just felt like you should know my suspicions”

As he walked down the hallway, away from Commander Holt, Artemis began to think of other ways to prevent Sanda from bringing this entire crisis down around their ears.


	11. Chapter 10

Pidge and Allura delivered the briefings on Sendak’s memories a few days later after they had gotten as much information as possible from the hologram.

“Then they didn’t deviate at all from their standard setup,” Foaly said, using a laser pointer to indicate locations on the projected map. “We’d already seen these bases. So tell us something we don’t already know, princess. Like what they’re being used for.”

“We think they’re weapons,” Veronica said from across the table, tapping a tablet in front of her to replace the maps with satellite images. “They have to keep the people too afraid to try anything. Otherwise, what would stop them from refusing to work and just walking away?”

“And let me guess,” Admiral Kelp said, folding his hands on the table. “We can’t just blow these things to kingdom come with nuclear warheads because humans are probably inside.”

“Correct,” Allura said. “The resistance’s information indicates such.”

“”We need intelligence,” Shiro said. “Which means we need to infiltrate one of the bases to discover what the Galra have inside and if there are any weaknesses we may be able to use to our advantage.”

Veronica tapped furiously on the screen on the table in front of her. “It appears that the closest base is 50 klicks south and in a complex urban environment.” Veronica dismissed all of the now-irrelevant pictures and began to send images of the nearest base to the screen.

Foaly tapped on the table at his end and the satellite images knit themselves into a cohesive picture. A red line traced a path from the Garrison to the base. “And there’s your best path. It’s a shitty path, in that you won’t have much protection, but it’s the best one we’ve got,” he declared.

No one spoke for a moment. “Then I suggest we use two teams,” Shiro said. “One will infiltrate the base. The other will provide cover for the infiltration team and observe Galra movements.”

Holly lead the mission.

Keith, Pidge, Griffin, and Allura would be on the ground, going into the base.

She, Hunk, Lance, and Kincade would be the sniper unit, watching from their perch in a destroyed penthouse.

Along the route, LEPAir agents and the other MFE pilots hid amongst the burned-out buildings and rubble to provide extra support.

“And you’re sure this building is safe?” Holly asked Foaly as they finally reached the penthouse where they’d be setting up shop.

“Safe as can be,” Foaly said. “Besides, if anything goes wrong, you have Artemis to blame. He wrote the algorithms to analyze architectural stability based on the satellite images obtained from the microtransmitters.”

“I hate both of you.” 

The group set up their equipment.

They watched the ground team make their way towards the base.

Once inside the base with Keith and Cosmo, Pidge pulled a box from her pocket and pressed her fingerprint against an indent on one side.

It buzzed. She set the box on the ground.

Several small, black spiders crawled out. As they made their way across the floor, they flickered and became nearly invisible.

“Perfect, perfect,” Foaly said in her ear. “Just give us a minute and we’ll be able to see every inch of this place.”

“And during that minute, I’ll be watching out for you,” Lance added with a smile.

“We need to find a port for the receiver,” Pidge whispered into the comms.

“Sentries--”

“East wall,” Foaly interrupted Lance.

“Hey!”

But they didn’t have time to argue as Cosmo took the two Paladins down the hall, behind where the patrol had been.

Foaly and Lance directed them around the sentries. 

Lance looked up once it seemed the Paladins inside the base would be clear of any more sentries.

“You’re a sniper, Commander?”

“Ask Artemis to show you the coin,” she answered. 

“Not to mention being the only person to ever defeat Commander Root in a game of paintball,” Foaly chimed in. “I think that’s about the only reason he ever kept you around after all the trouble you kept causing.”

“He definitely wouldn’t have--Griffin, Allura, drones headed your way.”

“Roger that,” Griffin said.

“I’ve got them.” Four shots from Kincade’s gun and the drones fell to the ground.

“Nice,” Griffin said.

Unfortunately, the shots had drawn out some sentries hidden in abandoned buildings around Griffin and Allura’s hiding spot, and while the burnt-out rubble provided some protection, it wasn’t going to provide enough.

“Foaly!” Holly scolded the centaur.

“I thought they were dormant!”

But that didn’t matter. Orange, blue, and green laser blasts took down all the sentries within seconds, before Foaly even had time to move the drones within firing range.

“They forget I’m focusing on like, three things at once,” Foaly told Keith and Pidge after dealing with the drones. “Holly thinks my job is easier than it actually is.”

Keith peeked out from behind one of the partitions lining the hallway in the Galra base. “Could you please shut up?”

“I could, but I think you’d want to know about the sentries headed your direction. From the far end, of course.”

Keith swore, but Pidge smiled. She jumped out in front of the sentries and began to dance.

And sing.

“So I put my hands up, they’re playing my song--”

Inside his booth, Foaly cringed.

Thankfully, Keith and the wolf took the opportunity to teleport, catching the sentries from above. In less than a second, they’d become scrap metal

“That was recorded and will never go away, Katie Holt. I hope you’re happy.”

“It worked, didn’t it?” She smiled beneath the visor of her helmet, and they ran into the door at the end of the hallway.

It responded to Pidge’s biometrics and opened.

The spiders had done their job.

As Pidge and Keith approached the console in the center of the chamber, Foaly rubbed his hands together.

Now came the time for the real subterfuge.

The spiders would be discovered shortly. Their little metal bodies would be plucked from their hiding places and their noisy spyware would be wiped from the system.

That’s why Pidge held a small portable drive with a worm on it. It would move nearly silently through the Galra system, hopping from device to device as it discovered new file trees to copy and send to the Garrison.

Their plans were about to be blown wide open.

Drones followed the sentries, swarming like flies over carrion.

For every one Lance, Holly, or Kincaid destroyed, another drone took its place.

The sentries began closing in.

“Time to go!” Hunk shouted from the stairwell.

“See you at the bottom,” Holly said, and took off out the window, dropping for a moment before activating her wings and swooping back up into the air.

In the distance, flashes of light appeared along their possible escape routes. They’d managed to find just about everyone.

“Clear the primary route!” Holly said into the comms. “Foaly, anything you can do?”

“Nada, Commander. The worm is still downloading.”

Lance’s voice interrupted Holly’s mental litany of profanity. “Pidge and Keith are on their way, Commander.”

Holly threw a concussor down into the most concentrated area of drones nearest Allura and Griffin, watching as every piece of electronic equipment within its area of effect sputtered and died. “Go!”

“Thanks, Commander!” Allura shouted as the two figures in white armor ran for the cruiser.

However, they didn’t have long. More sentries and drones swarmed over the fallen, trying their best to take aim at their fleeing targets.

Things got easier when Hunk, Lance, and Kincaid reached the ground floor, orange blasts cutting through two or three of the machines at once, but progress was still slow.

Holly used another grenade to get them the rest of the way to the rally point.

When they arrived, Pidge, Keith, and Cosmo had already gone to work on the drones and sentries. Machine parts and wrecked robots littered the ground around them.

Holly used her third grenade to allow the two cruisers to get a head start, but it wasn’t enough. A few carefully-thrown grenades and lot of gunfire barely got them the rest of the way out.

Back at the base, Cosmo began to whine. Deep blue blood dripped from a wound on his leg.

Holly placed her hands on him and whispered, “Heal.”

As amber sparks made their way down the wolf’s flank, the wound knit itself closed. 

When Holly withdrew her hand, Cosmo shook out his coat.

She looked up to see Keith a few feet away, watching her with an expression of surprise on his face.

Cosmo bounded over to his master, no longer limping.

Keith smiled at her.

Holly smiled back.


	12. Chapter 11

Artemis stood in front of the conference room, using his fingers to manipulate the images dancing across the screen. 

At the moment, it showed a detailed Galra schematic.

“Every base has what the Galra call Zaiforge cannons. They are, if my calculations are correct, more powerful than any weapon constructed on Earth so far--human or fairy,” he added, with a glance at Foaly and Trouble. 

“Is this what the slaves were for?” Commander Iverson asked.

Artemis nodded and pushed his glasses up his nose. “There’s no other way they could have been completed otherwise. However, the data regarding the slaves still needs to be fully processed.”

Hunk, who’d been staring at the table, looked up at Artemis.

“That’s all well and good, Mud- Artemis,” Admiral Kelp corrected himself. “But we can’t rescue the slaves if Earth is blown to smithereens. So how are we going to handle this?”

Pidge spoke up. “We know from prior experience that the cannons need to charge first. So a surprise attack is most likely to work.”

Keith nodded, not looking at the rest of the table. “Attack all six bases at once. It’s the only way to make sure that none of the Zaiforge cannons have time to charge before we can destroy them.”

Admiral Sanda began to shake her head before Keith even finished speaking. “Impossible.”

“Only without our Lions.” Artemis could tell Keith shared his feelings about the woman. “But we’ll need another way to retrieve them since the ship we came in on crashed.”

“There is absolutely no way this will work. Your Lions are on another planet. There are only five of them and six bases, which means you won’t be able to attack all the bases at once, as you would like.” Sanda surveyed the room. “Does anyone else have a more realistic plan?”

Shiro stood up. “The Lions are not the issue here. Each Paladin has a bond with theirs. If the Paladins connect with their Lions, they will come.”

“Even from across a solar system?”

“Even from across a solar system.” A new fire appeared in Shiro’s eyes. “Paladins, this is what you’ve been working for. Tap into those bonds and call your Lions to you.”

Allura stood too, clapping her hands. “Brilliant, Shiro!”

“We’ll call our Lions once we’re at the bases,” Keith mused. “The Galra can’t have any warning.”

“But what if they don’t come?” Hunk asked.

“They will,” Shiro answered, then turned back to the room. “All six canons will be destroyed before they can be launched. Then you can form Voltron and take down Sendak.”

“My pilots can fly the Paladins to four bases,” Griffin suggested.

Admiral Kelp nodded. “One of my pilots can take the fifth. The rest can act as backup.”

Shiro looked around the room once again. “So each MFE and a LEPAir pilot takes a Paladin to a base. Near each base, each Paladin will call their lion. Then the MFEs will rendezvous with LEPAir and attack the sixth base. Is that understood?”

Nods all around the room.

Holly flew Lance to the nearest base in one of the LEPAir stealth crafts.

It was a quiet ride. Lance tried to connect with his Lion. The way he sat and meditated with his eyes closed reminded her of Artemis.

But they kept getting closer to the base, and there was still no sign of the Lion. 

A light started to blink on the control panel.

The ship had heated up enough to distort the cam foil. They’d soon be visible.

Holly sealed her helmet and spoke on the comms. “Are you seeing this, Commander?”

“I’m seeing it,” Trouble answered in a terse voice.

“This ship is shit. We shouldn’t be testing it here.”

“Would you rather be traveling without any camouflage?”

Holly bit her lip and glanced at Lance. He was still meditating. She wanted to yell and ask him when the Lion would get there, but she reminded herself that it wouldn’t help and gritted her teeth in frustration.

A bolt of energy clipped the ship, spinning it out of control as Holly yanked the controls, trying to get it to obey her again.

Lance’s eyes shot open. “We’ve been spotted!”

“No shit!” Holly shouted.

Galra fighters tried to shoot them down in the air. Alarms began to blare in the cockpit.

‘Every other paladin has their Lion,” Shiro said. “Waiting on Lance.”

“And you might have to wait another minute,” Trouble answered tersely. “They’re being attacked.”

Commander Holt turned to Veronica, but she was already pulling up the audio from Holly and Lance’s fighter.

“We need to get out of here!” Holly shouted over the noise. “The ship is heating to dangerous levels!”

“Anything we could do?” Lance yelled back.

“Get shot down by Galra and die, explode or die, or eject and live! Button’s on the right side of your seat!”

Lance’s fingers scrabbled around until they found the plastic cover over the ejection button.

Next to him, Holly did the same. “Commander Holly Short, ejection confirmed,” she said, and just as she finished the phrase, her seat was gone, shot into the air.

“Paladin Lance, ejection please!” he shouted into the comms, and then his chair shot into the sky too.

The command center filled with chatter -- both on the comms and in person -- after they heard the ejection messages.

The Paladins and MFEs gasped, while fairies swore in Gnommish and horrified noises came from the humans surrounding Trouble.

Lance and Holly’s comms went silent, although Holly’s suit still registered that she was alive and injured.

Trouble took off his headset and took a deep breath before shouting to the room around them.

“Commander Short is alive!”

Artemis and Foaly hung back in Foaly’s station, allowed to see and hear everything but not interfere.

Artemis released a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding when Trouble shouted the news.

“It’s useless if the Paladin doesn’t survive!” Commander Iverson shouted at Trouble.

“Did you forget that she can heal him?” Trouble shouted back. 

Later, he would credit himself for not calling the Mud Man a dumbass.

In the desert, amber sparks zipped around Holly’s body, knitting together the bones in her arm and leg, and chasing her bruises and concussion. Several more sparks lingered on her back.

She’d landed on her side, the parachutes having deployed properly.

Unfortunately, they hadn’t been high enough for them to make much of a difference in the landing.

Slowly, Holly lifted her head and turned it. Her spine and limbs felt stiff.

She couldn’t see or hear any of the Galra aircraft, but she could hear Trouble.

“Holly, come in. Holly answer me. Please--”

“I hear you,” she grumbled. “Anything on the status of Galra aircraft near the base?”

A pause. “Still in the area, but no longer attacking. What’s the Paladin’s status?”

“Guess I better find out.” Holly whacked the release on her chest and rolled away from the seat before getting to her feet and looking around.

Lance lay some thirty feet away from her, unmoving.

Holly’s breath caught in her throat and she took off running towards him.

To her relief, Lance’s chest rose and fell. He had released the harness some ways above the ground -- his seat lay several feet away.

She placed both hands on his chest and exhaled, releasing the magic within her. “Heal.”

The sparks rose once again from her fingers, but this time danced over Lance’s body.

A voice in her ear shattered her concentration: “Hurry up. They’ve figured out you’re alive.”

Holly pushed her power harder, but with her age, she could only make them do so much. She watched the fighters fly steadily closer and steadily lower, trying to stave off the panic from knowing that there was no way out of this situation. Not fast enough to avoid being killed or taken by the Galra.

Lasers pounded the desert in front of her, turning sand to glass and slag.

Holly put her head to her chest and prayed to whatever gods might hear as the sand rained down upon them.

But then she heard the lasers hitting metal and felt a cool shadow envelop her.

In the moment of silence that followed, Holly looked up. Her ears rang.

The giant mechanical lion stood over them and roared.

Lance brushed Holly’s hands away and stood up. “Good to see you, buddy.”

The Lions began attacking their respective bases while the MFEs and LEPAir took the sixth.

But something felt wrong. Artemis’s spine tingled with the sensation.

This wasn’t how the attack should be going.

The Paladins seemed to agree. 

“We have a spy,” Artemis told Foaly. 

Foaly turned in his chair. “For once, Mud Boy,” he said, “I’m inclined to agree.”

Artemis left Foaly’s booth and ran for the operations room, his Garrison keycard in his hand.

When he reached it, the center wouldn’t open. It was locked to him.

He couldn’t stand being a contractor!

Artemis began pounding on the door. “Call off the attack!” he shouted. “Call it off! They knew!”

He didn’t even notice that someone might have been coming to the door, and nearly hit Commander Iverson in his panic. “You have a spy. Call off the attack.”

“You’re not in any position to be giving orders, Fowl.” Commander Iverson pushed him away from the doorway, and Artemis knew he had no hope of overpowering the other man.

“It would be in your best interests to adapt your strategy now for a more prolonged assault.” Artemis walked backwards a few steps and then shrugged. “But what do I know? I’m just a contractor.”

Artemis went back to his workstation and tunneled into the fairy VPN, the only network here he could be certain the Garrison didn’t have eyes on, and opened a chat window with Foaly.

**Artemis:** They won’t listen. We’ll have to do this ourselves.

**Foaly: ** And let me guess...you think it’s Admiral Sanda?

**Artemis: ** Yes. We need to find out what she knows.

Shiro had heard Artemis shouting through the door...and didn’t think that he was wrong.

This was too much retaliation, too fast. The Zaiforge cannons had actually been charged and ready to launch. The MFEs and LEPAir forces had been driven back like mere flies interrupting a picnic.

And then there was the disruption of Voltron.

All of the Zaiforge cannons had hit Voltron as it flew towards Sendak’s ship. The combined blast had separated the Lions, allowing them to be pulled in by a tractor beam.

They didn’t have a plan for this. They’d been so sure this plan of attack was going to work. The Garrison had done everything in its power to keep the attack preparations as under-the-radar as possible.

All comms had gone silent.

Commander Holt stood by his side, lips pursed.

“I heard what Fowl said,” Shiro’s voice broke the piercing silence. “Bring him in.”

“After what Mr. Fowl pulled to get here, he’s not permitted to have access to any vital Garrison systems outside of what he needs for his projects,” Commander Holt said, the ice in his gaze betraying a great dislike for the other man.

“Do you have any other ideas?” Shiro raised his voice and spoke to all the officers and personnel. “Does anyone have any other ideas?”

No one said anything. 

“Then bring him here,” he told Commander Holt before turning to Veronica. “Account for everyone in the building and confirm that there are no outgoing transmissions coming from anywhere but this room.”

Finally, he looked at Commander Iverson. “And lock down the base. No one enters or leaves until we know who the spy is.”

As everyone waited for the officers to return, Shiro called the Paladins -- all at once, and individually.

It reminded Trouble of the times he’d seen people die. How, if someone knew them, they would call out for them to just wake up, try to heal them, anything.

How the LEP would have to pull them back as they fought their way toward the dead, possibly towards danger, until they sank to the ground sobbing, utterly broken.

His own hands clutched the edge of the desk until his knuckles were white. Because of the crash, Holly had gone with Lance in the Lion.

Wherever they were, she was too.

Artemis arrived and conversation above begun again.

“The spy is almost certainly Admiral Sanda.”

“We’re not doing this,” Commander Holt answered.

“He’s right,” Coran said, rising from where he’d sat to monitor the operations. “We can’t win this fight without the Paladins, and they’re up on Sendak’s ship, which you’ve been collecting data from.”

“Fine,” Artemis said. “Where’s a workstation I can use?”

Commander Holt gestured to where he’d been sitting.

Artemis sat down and began to work as the others discussed weapons. Veronica and Iverson returned. Admiral Sanda was suspiciously absent.

Artemis pulled up a map of the main ship from the system and sent the image to the main screen at the front of the room. He pulled a laser pointer from one pocket and indicated a location on the schematic.

“That’s where they have their prisoners.”

“Couldn’t you just let them out if you know where they are?” Iverson asked.

“Not if you would like this worm to remain useful. The second we use it for more than passive observation, they will focus on flushing out virus out. We can help the Paladins by using the cameras to spy for them and guide them out of the ship. We cannot help them if we go in blind because we exposed ourselves.”

“Would launching the Atlas help?” Shiro asked.

“But it’s never flown!” Commander Holt protested.

“No, it hasn’t,” Artemis agreed as he flipped through security feeds from the ship. He stopped and looked up at Coran. “But I think it’s possible to get it flying. We at least need to try.”

Shiro turned to Coran and Commander Holt. “Do it.”

Holly woke up when she felt her body hit the ground like a sack of potatoes.

She fought the urge to groan. Her magic was nearly depleted.

Around her, she heard people talking.

“Hand over the Paladins to me and let us go home,” a woman’s familiar voice said, growing angrier with each word. “We had a deal!”

“We did,” a gruffer voice said calmly. “Throw her in the brig with the Paladins.”

A foot nudged Holly. “And this one? It’s not a Paladin.”

“That one can go for testing. I’m not entirely sure it’s even human,” someone else hissed.

Holly only opened her eyes as she felt herself being roughly dragged away.

The Paladins lay on the floor surrounded by the Galra.

And she was being pulled away.

The transition to the Atlas abruptly stopped Artemis’s work.

Things had become more dire. The Zaiforge cannons were on the move.

And the Atlas still had no viable power source.

Foaly, Coran, Commander Holt, and as many technicians as they could find were working as fast as they could on the ship’s electronics..

Civilians and soldiers alike walked by, their arms full of crates, bags, or boxes, whatever they could fit.

Artemis had only grabbed his computer.

Everything else he held dear had likely already been destroyed, if it hadn’t already been hidden away within the Lower Elements.

On the other end of the hangar, the MFEs and LEPAir fighters prepared for takeoff to cover the base’s defense the moment the particle barrier dropped for the launch.

Artemis shuffled slightly closer to the Atlas as the line moved forward.

Holly logged the route as they dragged her through the hallway, small motions with her fingers sending a list of letters into the suit’s computer.

Someone lifted her into the air, throwing her forcefully onto a metal table. Holly bit back a shout as her bruised body was battered once again.

She’d seen Shiro missing an arm. She didn’t want to be next.

The soldiers strapped her tightly to the table before leaving.

Scientists in isolation suits that ballooned around their bodies and obscured their faces entered the room through another door. Through the masks, Holly could make out their muffled voices.

“Those idiots!” one of them grumbled as they peered down at her. “This is clearly just a diminutive human!”

She felt them remove the weaponry from her belt and struggled not to flinch away from their rough, probing hands. 

They pulled off her helmet.

“And clearly, you are wrong,” the other soldier said. “Humans do not have pointed ears.” He tugged at the cartilage, then held up a scanner of some kind to her ear.

“Then perhaps the creature is of Altaean descent,” the other suggested, miffed.

“Then it would not be so short!”

Holly sighed and rolled her eyes. If this was the worst they could do, the inanity would probably kill her before the medical experiments.

The Paladins heard a voice come from the speakers inside their cells.

“Hello Paladins, and welcome to Chez Galra, where you will have the worst accommodations of your life. My name is Foaly, and I’ll be your guide out of this godforsaken hellhole.”

“Foaly!” Pidge exclaimed. “The worm works!”

“Shh, keep your voices down,” Foaly hissed. “Right now there are no guards near your cells, but I’m not going to take risks if I don’t have to. Don’t want them trying to flush me out. Right now their security camera firmware happens to have a conveniently urgent update, so they don’t know what’s going on, but they’ll catch on if this takes too long.”

“Got it,” Keith answered. “What’s the plan?”

“Right now we’re creating 3D renderings of you, which will be inserted into the camera feeds with a slight bit of lag, make them focus on the cameras and not you. I’m recording you right now, so pace, sit, do jumping jacks, whatever you want the Galra to see on a loop. It shouldn’t take too long now.”

“What about the Atlas?” Pidge asked. “Is my dad going to launch it?”

“Any minute now, hopefully. Anyway, I’ll be sending the maps of this ship to your suits so you can find your Lions and get out. It would also be much appreciated if you picked up Commander Short on the way out, as they’re currently treating her like a lab rat, and we’d all be rather pissed if she got left behind. I’ll be with you all the way. Also, guards are headed your way, so shut up before they hear anything. Foaly out.”

“We might have enough power,” Artemis reported back after talking to the engineers. “And if we do, it won’t last for long.”

“Oh!” Coran exclaimed from the other side of the bridge.

All eyes rested on him as he dug under the collar of his tunic for something. “I forgot about this!” He fished out a glowing blue crystal.

Artemis blinked.

Shiro’s eye twitched.

“It was created after the destruction of the Castle of Lions,” he explained. “It’s got infinite mass.”

While Shiro went to find Commander Holt, Artemis walked up to Coran and took the crystal in his hand. He could feel its energy pulling at him, and he didn’t need to be a scientist to know that he held a source of immense power.

“How did you forget you had it?” Artemis asked.

Coran shrugged. “Happens.”

Artemis couldn’t really figure out what to say after that.

After the crystal was installed, the Atlas ready for launch. Everyone took their places.

Everything powered on simultaneously, a magnificent sight after so many failures.

“It’s working,” Veronica said from her monitors. “Everything’s working. All subsystems are go.”

Artemis’s phone buzzed in his pocket. Foaly’s confirmed that everything worked on his end.

Across the bridge, people called out that they were ready to fly, that their system worked too.

Shiro stood over everyone, surveying the team with pride.

Artemis slipped out the door.

This wasn’t his place. It might never have been, but it certainly wasn’t now.

He was when Commander Holt followed him.

“This is your ship, shouldn’t you be flying it?”

Commander Holt shook his head. “I can’t command this. I’m not a strategist. Shiro knows what he’s doing more than I ever could.”

Artemis found himself nodding. “He certainly has the background for the position.”

It was odd. The two men hadn’t exchanged more than a handful of words since the discussion about Admiral Sanda.

But Commander Holt put his hand on Artemis’s shoulder. “You were right.”

A bitter smile crossed Artemis’s face. “I’d rather not have been. I’d rather she’d simply been stubborn and grandfathered into her position, rather than a traitor. I wish it didn’t have to end this way.”

“It’s painful to know that they’re up there and that we need to get them out.”

Artemis nodded, knowing he meant Pidge and Holly.

“Commander, we’re standing in an impossible ship, powered by an impossible form of energy, fighting impossible creatures. We can do this. We will save them. The Paladins have survived this long, and they can certainly survive a little longer.”

Okay, enough was enough. There was enough magic in Holly for one good  _ mesmer _ , and she was going to use it.

_ “Stop,” _ she said, focusing her magic into her eyes and voice.

The scientists who had been attending to her stopped, and those that weren’t turned to look at her.

_ “You’re going to release me and give me my belongings.” _

One of the Galra had already started loosening her restraints.

_ “And once I leave the room, you’ll forget I was ever here. Nothing more to see or do. It’s an easy day. Get this lab cleaned up and take the rest of the day off. There was an equipment malfunction and you’re reinstalling the software. Do you understand?” _

“Yes.” A chorus of sleepy, slurred,  _ mesmerized  _ voices answered her.

The ship shook and Pidge grinned. “The Galra are under attack!” she called. “They did it!”

“And lucky for you, I’ve got everything ready on my end. Get ready to move, I’m opening the doors.”

Foaly hit a button on his keyboard and watched the Paladins flee from their cells.

He hit another button to mute the sounds from Admiral Sanda’s cell.

Ah. Now that was better.

Easier to focus without the annoying noise.

Holly suited up, grabbing her weapon and holding it at the ready before darting out of the laboratory and down the hall.

“Commander Short,” Foaly said approvingly. “Good to have you back. The Paladins are on their way out, the Atlas is launched, and I’m wiping their security footage. Not that their cameras were working in the first place.”

She turned her gun to the highest setting.

“Sentries around the corner,” Foaly warned her. Holly slowed to a creep and peered around the corner, her body plastered against the wall. 

Holly watched them walk towards her until she knew she didn’t have another option. She fired until the metal soldiers fell, holes burnt right through them.

She waited for Foaly’s confirmation that they’d gone offline before she ran over their scrap-metal bodies.

Holly met the Paladins by the room holding their Lions, which Keith unlocked by holding an unconscious guard up to the security scanner. He dropped the body on the ground in the doorway as the other Paladins pushed past him and ran towards the Lions.

Despite the alarms blaring behind them, Holly couldn’t help but marvel at the sheer majesty of the metallic creatures. 

“That was too easy,” Foaly snickered.

“Come on, let’s go!” Keith shouted to the Paladins.

“Let’s blow this popsicle stand!” Lance added.

Holly followed Keith into his Lion.

Outside the ship, chaos reigned. Lasers, blasts, and explosions lit up the sky as fighters and cruisers battled.

“Foaly, the Zaiforge cannons have started moving,” Commander Holt’s voice came over the intercom. “Can you get us a projection?”

“Sure thing, boss, but I don’t need it. I can see the programs they’re running.”

“What are they doing?”

“Combining the beams from the Zaiforge cannons into one giant radiation blast. They want to blow us away.”

Commander Holt didn’t respond.

“Commander?” Foaly asked. “You get that?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I got that.”

It didn’t take long for the Paladins to come up with a strategy.

Sendak’s ship needed to be taken out.

‘I know what we can do,” Foaly told Commander Holt. “Put me through to Shiro.”

“Hey Commander, Foaly here. I think it’s time we activate the worm.” 

Veronica spoke before Shiro. “It’s out one major point of advantage over the Galra. Are you sure?”

“Those plates aren’t going to hold forever, V,” Foaly answered. “It’s time we dropped the Galra straight out of the sky.’

Veronica glanced up at Shiro, who nodded. 

“Do it.”

Foaly’s fingers danced across his keyboard, executing scripts he’d been squirreling away in the Galra systems, grinning as error messages flashed across their screens and the voices from the security footage became more panicked.

Either by hell or high water, this ship was going down.

But Foaly hadn’t acted quickly enough. 

While Sendak’s ship had shut down and started its fatal descent, the Zaiforge cannons still obeyed their programming.

They fired at the Lions.

The shields barely held, and shattered within a minute.

Now the Atlas’s shield felt the brunt of the attack, its worsening power drain announced for all to hear by Veronica.

Stupid, stupid, stupid! He should have stopped this!

Foaly slammed one hand on his desk before getting back to work disabling everything else.

Trouble Kelp spotted him first.

Sendak, running down the side of the ship.

“Not today, buddy,” he said, and gunned the engine of his fighter.

“What are you doing?” Griffin asked.

“Sendak’s getting away and I’m going to stop him. LEPAir, follow the MFEs’ lead.”

“The hell, Trouble?” Chix asked. “That’s some Commander Short shit.”

“Do we want to end this or not?” Trouble snapped. “I’m going after him, and that’s final. See you on the ground.”

Trouble set the autopilot to take the fighter back to base and launched himself out onto the hull of the falling ship. He landed hard and rolled into one of the fins, which he used to pull himself upright.

Magic flowed through his veins, healing his bruises.

Sendak didn’t waste a moment to attack. He sent his oversized prosthetic in Trouble’s direction, who only barely dodged it while pulling out his weapon.

“This ends now!” Trouble shouted over shriek of the wind and the sounds of battle. He launched himself into the air, activating his wings, and fired at Sendak, the blasts from his overclocked Neutrino carving a line of scorch marks down the hull of the ship.

Sendak turned to dodge and Trouble shielded, taking the alien’s confusion as an opportunity to get closer. He wrapped his legs around Sendak’s neck, continuing his forward momentum. The power behind the wings alone flipped him over, throwing him into the ground. The brief loss of focus broke Trouble’s shield.

Sendak pushed Trouble backwards, and he tumbled, tossed by the wind until he caught himself. Sendak rushed towards him.

Trouble threw himself straight up, flying high over Sendak before crashing to the hull again. This time Sendak was ready, throwing his arm again and catching Trouble straight in the chest. He felt his breath catch as pain blossomed through his torso. He felt ribs crack and shatter, shards of bone pricking and poking internal organs.

Then magic, warm and familiar, knitting him back together.

Trouble struggled to stand, but he couldn’t stop. Couldn’t give in. He would die, either by Sendak’s hand or from the impact.

Then Trouble felt himself flying through the air.

And everything went black.


	13. Chapter 12

He awoke to Holly and the Paladins standing over him, the Lions forming a protective circle around the group. Holly held out her hand.

“Sendak is done for,” she said, helping her commanding officer to his feet. “I stuck a laser through his throat.”

Trouble accepted the help. He glanced behind Holly, where Sendak’s corpse lay in an unceremonious heap, three holes visible through the neck and the head. She’d been thorough. “You did it,” he said, dumbfounded.

A battle, severe enough to drive them from their homes, expected to last for ages, ended. Just like that.

“You did it too. Have to admit, though, launching yourself out of a fighter to take down the top alien bad guy--I didn’t expect that from you. Maybe a couple years ago, but not today.”

Trouble blushed.

“When things come down to the wire, you do what you have to. And it turns out, I’ve still got it in me.” He flexed one arm to punctuate the sentimentality with a joke, and Holly laughed right along.

Things were going to be okay now. He could feel it.

“What’s that?” Hunk’s question interrupted the fairy reunion. He pointed behind them, and Holly and Trouble turned to look.

Something large, burning orange, hurtled towards Earth.

“What the hell is that?” Foaly’s voice came through Commander Holt’s comms.

“I have no idea,” Commander Holt whispered back. An icy knife of fear struck his heart.

The thing hit the ground, creating an explosion of dust and shrapnel.

“Get back to the Atlas! They need you there!” Keith shouted at them as he ran towards the Black Lion, towards the white, metallic, thing unfolding itself out of the impact crater.

Neither fairy thought to question him. Instead, they ran for the airlock.

Foaly winced as the ship shook from an impact. “We need to figure out where this came from,” he said over the comms to Artemis. “Get up here and get cracking. It has to have a weak spot somewhere.”

The Atlas had...lots of hardware. And software. Any way Foaly could think of sending signals at the monstrosity, it was there. He didn’t even think most of these were in the specs. Weird.

Someone here was damn smart. Well, someone other than him. 

While Artemis moved his slow butt, Foaly set up the computing array and calibrated the sensors. Even the slightest give might be a sign of a way in, and they had to be sure they noticed it immediately.

Finally, the Mud Boy arrived (though the term ‘boy’ no longer accurately described the middle-aged man).

“Get to work, let’s automate this. I’m already working on optimizing our equipment,” Foaly said.

Artemis sat down at the other chair and started to work. “How did this stuff get here?” He turned and showed Foaly the list of networking devices.

Foaly shrugged. “I thought that too, but the ship was built in such a hurry it’s possible that we missed it. No reason we can’t use it if it’s here, though.”

Artemis shook his head. “No. I signed off on the documents. This is wrong. None of this should be here. Something is wrong.”

The ship rattled again and Artemis put his hand on the desk to catch himself.

“Well, I think we’re not exactly in a position to investigate this right now,” Foaly said as he straightened his desk again. “How about we take this stuff for granted and get to work?”

Holly and Trouble ran into the hangar as the MFE and LEPAir pilots took to their planes.

“We’re coming too,” Trouble said, running to his fighter and beginning the preflight checks.

“Only if you’re fit to fly,” Griffin answered. 

Trouble nodded.

“What is it with humans and not letting us help?” Holly grumbled.

“Okay, you can deal with it yourselves,” Griffin muttered. He clapped his gloved hands together. “We’re going to go out there to fight that thing and help Voltron. We are so close to saving our planet and we can’t stop now. Everyone, fly safe and be smart. That thing has proven itself to be strong and we don’t need to lose anyone today. Now, get ready to fly!”

And with that, he jumped into his MFE.

“The kid’s a born leader,” Trouble said to Holly over the comms as they prepared for takeoff. “Exactly the kind of person Earth’s going to need when this is over.”

Outside, Voltron was frozen in place.

The fighters laid down covering fire while Voltron recovered. But nothing they did impacted the foreign robot-thing. Their attacks rolled off it like droplets of water.

“Those blades sapped out energy!” Keith shouted over the comms.

Shiro relayed the message to Foaly.

“Change of plans. You take the signals, I’ll try to analyze these blades,” Foaly said to Artemis.

“Pilots, you need to go,” Keith commanded. “Those blasts will kill you instantly. Rendezvous with the Atlas.”

“But you’ll be exposed!” Trouble shouted back.

“We don’t need anyone to die today!”

Reluctantly, they obeyed.

“D’Arvit,” Foaly breathed as the Atlas recovered from another harsh blow, this one sending their electronics flickering. “Look at this.”

Artemis stood to look at what Foaly had on his screen. “It’s...consuming our energy?”

“Gotta be. Systems all across the board are affected.”

Artemis ran one hand through his hair. “Thank god they pulled the fighters.”

With the ship on backup power, ascending into the upper atmosphere, and Voltron pinned to the ground, the Atlas’s circumstances seemed dire.

“The cowards!” Holly shouted as the pilots disembarked. “We need to help Voltron!”

“Don’t call Shiro a coward,” Griffin replied softly, though his anger was obvious.

Rizavi and Trouble both opened their mouths to speak, but the Atlas began to shift. The ship’s whole architecture changed underneath their feet.

Grievances and frustrations forgotten, the pilots ran to see what was happening.

“This is impossible,” Artemis stared at the Atlas’s diagnostics in awe. Foaly, for once, said nothing. “Nothing in this ship should give it these capabilities.”

“Nope.”

“You’re seeing that too? The ship has taken on a humanoid form?”

“Like a giant Voltron.”

The fight raged on. But this time, the Atlas could fight back.

When the battle finally ended, when the Lions and the beast fell from the sky, it felt like a weight had lifted from everyone’s backs.


	14. Chapter 13

Everyone mobilized to find the Lions, to rescue battered and exhausted pilots. Researchers and scouts scattered to recover every last bit of the mech.

Time passed peacefully.

Cautiously, fairies began to emerge from the ground after the Voltron Coalition arrived on Earth. 

For the first time, fairy civilians saw the sun.

So many different sentient species had come to Earth, so what was one more emerging from the void beneath their feet?

Someone joked that they’d finally have to throw away the mind-wipe equipment, but the LEP actually had considered the idea.

The humans would never forget this.

The People’s way of life had changed forever.

Although the Garrison officials were quite keen to remind Artemis of his role as a contractor, that didn’t stop Commander Holt from taking Artemis to see what they’d recovered from the recently-concluded underwater salvage, even if it had nothing to do with his official assignments.

Holt’s face wore a strange expression. Artemis didn’t know what to expect.

“This has to be kept entirely confidential,” Commander Holt said, but not harshly. He sounded tired. 

Artemis nodded.

In the Garrison’s hanger, the recovered mech parts formed a 2-D approximation of the real thing, spread across the space where the Atlas had been.

Artemis and Foaly both checked the Galra computers for signs of the mech’s origins. They found nothing. The most worrying outcome, in Artemis’s opinion. 

They had no intelligence. This had come out of nowhere. 

Earth probably wouldn’t survive another war. It had barely survived this one.

Something had been pulled to the side of the reconstruction. Commander Holt lead Artemis to a long tube, about the size of one of the Altaean healing chambers.

He gasped when he saw what it contained.

A woman. An Altaean woman, going by the facial markings.

“That’s why we couldn’t get in,” he said numbly. “It wasn’t piloted remotely.”

“Exactly.”

Artemis turned to the Commander. “Allura needs to see this immediately.”

Commander Holt nodded tentatively. “Are you sure?”

Artemis’s mind flashed back to his family, to the fact that they had all most likely died.

“She has a right to know.”

Commander Holt sighed, an anxiety in his mannerisms that Artemis hadn’t seen before. “Okay. Okay, I’ll bring her down.”

The time came for the revolution to continue. While Galra rule had crumbled on earth, it remained for much of the galaxy.

Those planets deserved to be liberated too.

Shiro dissolved LEPAir. Earth needed people who could lead, who could understand working with other species.

The kinds of people who could ensure that the fairies and aliens would soon have a place in the world.

Unsurprisingly, fairies seemed like the natural choice to fill the void.

The last day on Earth before launch arrived sooner than most people felt it should.

They had their final briefing with the new crew of the Atlas.

Artemis found it surreal.

When he’d arrived at the Garrison, the earth had been so different. He’d had to resort to sneaking around, to hacking and espionage, to get humans to take the People seriously. Now they lead earth’s rebuilding efforts, cultivating earth’s beauty, healing the sick and wounded, and organizing reunion for those survivors whose families had ended up scattered by the Galra.

The fairies’ fears that the humans would hate them for their magic never came to light, because fairy magic is what the humans needed more than anything at that moment.

Commander Shirogane gave everyone on the base a night off.

Artemis wasn’t used to not having something to finish, something else to check, but here he was.

How would he use the time? He could keep working on some of his projects for the Atlas or he could study the data yet to be analyzed from the Galra ships. They still didn’t know where that last beast with the mysterious Altaean pilot had come from, after all. 

Or he could work on finding his family.

But there was one person here he hadn’t talked to for ages.

Everything else he could work on in space. But after launch, they would all be busy again, and he wouldn’t get a chance like this for a long time.

Artemis found Holly in one of the common areas, a tablet and stylus in her hands. She seemed absolutely focused on the screen in front of her. Artemis approached her.

She’d been drawing a bird.

“It’s beautiful,” Artemis said, startling her.

“It’s not a real bird,” Holly said.

Artemis raised an eyebrow in confusion.

“Just anticipating your next question.”

“Actually, that was not my next question, but nice try.” He smiled. “My next question was going to be, would you like to have dinner tonight? I feel like I’ve barely seen you since we joined the Garrison”

“We have barely seen each other since we joined the Garrison,” Holly agreed. “Although, in case you haven’t noticed, there aren’t really restaurants anymore.”

“It doesn’t matter. I can cook.”

Holly set down her drawing and crossed her arms “No way.”

Artemis nodded. “I learned when Butler was ill.”

Holly’s face fell. She remembered the bodyguard too. “I never knew.”

“You never knew because we still had the house staff. I learned anyway because I was never going to replace him.” Artemis smiled slightly. “Now it’s come in handy.”

“Did you ever hear about your family?”

Artemis’s face fell into that mask constructed over years of triumph and hardship, the one that Holly almost never saw anymore. “No. All I know is that the villa is gone.”

Holly stood and placed her hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

Artemis shook his head. “I trust my brothers to survive on their own. I have more pressing matters to attend to now. So, shall you come around seven?”

The abrupt change of topic bothered Holly because it was a deflection, meant to stop her line of questioning. 

She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Sure, seven works.”

Holly arrived that evening, and Artemis opened the door. His habit of dressing like a businessman for all occasions never stopped, except today he wore an apron over his slacks.

“Come in,” he said, and showed Holly to the small desk in the room, which had been set like a table. All kinds of computing equipment and half-finished projects were shoved against the opposite wall.

“I see you haven’t started packing yet.”

Artemis rubbed his neck. “I was a bit busy. Vegan food isn’t exactly common anymore.”

Holly nodded. She understood that a lot of things were hard to get these days.

“Anyway, I made pasta and salad. It’s simple, but…”

“I get it. You didn’t exactly have a lot of time.”

Artemis poured them each a glass of water from the plastic pitcher. “No, not exactly, what with all the preparations that need done for launch.”

They both sat at the table in silence for a moment before taking food from the serving bowls, everything emblazoned with the Garrison’s logo. 

“I hear that the People are adjusting well to life on the surface,” Artemis said. 

“Yeah, it’s a real, well, almost a problem,” Holly answered. “The immigration drain is so rapid that it’s hard to maintain the Lower Elements’ infrastructure, and all the entitled Mud Men want to know why we didn’t share any of our fun toys with them before the invasion.”

“Quite frankly, their attitude sounds like the reason why.”

“Exactly. That, and their disgusting habit of throwing their waste all over the planet.”

“At least that changed after the Crash. There were a lot of people who took the collapse of technology as an opportunity to build something new.”

“That doesn’t exactly mean the damage that’s already done has gone away.”

“True.”

They ate in silence for a moment. “You know,” Holly said, “Going to space is something I never thought I would ever do.”

“I feel like that’s true for most people,” Artemis pointed out. 

Holly smiled. “Not for you, though. You’d just build your own rocket if you felt like it.”

“Actually, it is true for me. I spent so much of my childhood focusing on crime and my father, then much of my adulthood focusing on the People and rebuilding the Earth to consider going to space.”

“It’s probably a good thing. Who knows what your younger self would have done to the universe had he decided to discover aliens instead of fairies?”

“At the time, the Fowl empire was spiraling into debt,” Artemis gestured with his fork. “I had to work quickly. There wasn’t much time for being clever.”

“More clever than hunting down a fairy?”

Artemis was about to answer her when his phone buzzed. He answered. “Hello?” A short pause. “Yes.” Another pause. “I’m on my way.” He hung up and turned to Holly, his expression serious. “Something’s happened to Luca.”

Holly had to jog behind Artemis to keep up with his long strides as he headed toward the medical center.

When they reached Luca’s room, Commander Holt and Romelle stood outside. Both looked anxious. Romelle cried silently. Curtains covered the observation windows.

“She just collapsed while I was talking to her. I didn’t do anything--she just fell over!” Romelle exclaimed.

“She’s dead?” Holly asked.

Commander Holt nodded solemnly. “It was...incredibly strange.” He glanced around the hallway. “Let’s talk somewhere else.”

They went into an empty exam room and Commander Holt closed the door behind them.

“Tell me what happened,” Artemis said to Romelle. “Start from the beginning.”

“Well, I went in to talk to Luca to see if she would talk to another Altaean and tell us what she knew. But she got angry at me and called me a traitor for working with the Paladins. She talked about Lotor and talked about how Honerva was going to save the colony and bring back Altaea. And that was when she just...How could this happen?” Romelle’s eyes began to tear up again.

Artemis turned to Commander Holt. “Can we see the security footage?”

Sure.” Commander Holt began logging in to the terminal in the room.

“I don’t want to see this.” Romelle shook her head.

Holly glanced at Artemis, then at Romelle. “We’ll step out for a minute,” she offered.

“I just wanted to help her,” Romelle whispered.

Holly put a hand on her arm. “I understand.”

“I never wanted her to die.”

The memory of Commander Root’s death flashed through Holly’s mind. 

“I know.”

“Have you ever seen someone die?” Romelle asked. 

Holly nodded. A lump was beginning to form in her throat. “Yes.”

Romelle shook her head. “It’s horrible. One moment, they’re alive, and the next, everything just...stops.” She turned to Holly. “I saw my brother die.”

Holly didn’t have words for her. “I’m so sorry.”

Artemis saved Holly from Romelle’s persistent, anxious questioning by opening the door. She’d seen people have so many reactions to trauma. She’d even seen reactions like Romelle’s before, where the person couldn’t stop talking, asking questions, figuring out why horrible things happened.

But that wasn’t how Holly coped. She pressed everything down inside until she felt like the pressure might break her in half, then she found something to break.

“You can come in again.”. 

After the door had shut behind him, Artemis shook his head. “I cannot discern why she died from the video alone. My initial thought was that a capsule of poison had been implanted into her body, which would burst and kill her if she said Honerva’s name. However, all her body scans showed no foreign objects. So my next thought is, we should begin to investigate Altaean and Druid Quintessence manipulation.” Artemis glanced at Holly. “A sudden cardiovascular event could also have caused this.”

“Are you saying she was resisting the  _ mesmer _ ?” Holly asked.

“Maybe Druids have a similar method of magical persuasion with similar side effects. Maybe instead of resistance to the magic causing extreme stress on the body, disobedience causes that same stress. Luca was not willingly going to acquiesce to our requests for information, but she did reveal a few things about her beliefs and origins before mentioning Honerva.”

“Then she died,” Romelle said.

“Yes. Then she died.” 

Artemis had taken blood from Romelle and asked for blood from Luca to be sent to the People’s scientists studying the nature of magic before the launch. To really see how another species manipulated Quintessence would be important, but they had to make do.

And if that robot had come from Honerva, then a lot of things began to make sense.

The Galra having no record of it.

No connections going to or coming from the robot.

Luca’s death.

Artemis spent his last night on Earth combing the Castle of Lions and the Galra data for information on Honerva he hadn’t yet seen.


	15. Chapter 14

Their lives in space fell into a steady, regular rhythm. Training for the soldiers, intelligence-gathering and course-plotting from those who weren’t, and the regular assaults from and on planets controlled by the Galra.

Eventually, Artemis started to lose track of the days, but that didn’t stop him from thinking of Earth.

From thinking of his family.

He’d barely spent any time searching for them, but if they’d managed to search for him, they’d believe he was dead.

Or not coming back.

The guilt gnawed at a hole inside of him.

The emptiness of space couldn’t distract him.

Foaly and Holly, meanwhile, kept busy. Foaly acted as a makeshift quartermaster and ran an intelligence-gathering operation with Pidge, Hunk, and Artemis. Holly went out with the MFEs and Paladins to take on the Galra whenever she wasn’t training for those missions.

Pidge often made reports about their search for the Galra during their daily meetings. “That data we recovered from the abandoned ship is really similar to some of the data Foaly gathered when they attacked Earth. I think there might be more of those things out there.”

“That is the last thing we need,” Holly said, and Artemis kind of agreed with her, though he was not surprised.

Foaly beckoned with his finger. “Give it here.” 

Pidge tapped at her suit computer, then Foaly’s phone buzzed. He gave her a thumbs-up before beginning to look through the data.

“Shiro, we must adjust our objective,” Allura announced.

Artemis’s own voice joined the brief chorus of disagreement.

Shiro stood, quieting the room. “We can’t change our mission now. There are too many people waiting for freedom from the Galra. Whatever Honerva’s doing, it can wait.”

“But there might be another Altaean!” Allura exclaimed.

“There are strategic reasons not to pursue the beast,” Artemis said. “One, it reveals her hand. Is she actively hunting for us, trying to lure us to a location, or does she have another goal? Two, Voltron and Atlas together struggled fighting the Robeast last time, and they had the entire Galaxy Garrison behind them. We need to be able to fight in a place where we have an advantage if we even want to survive without the extra manpower. And three, it’s possible Honerva’s magic allowed her to learn what happened last time so she could adapt her beasts to our strategy. We’re not in a place where we can fight and win this on our own.”

Shiro nodded. “Exactly.”

“But what Allura is proposing is a non-issue if Voltron and Atlas split up,” Keith said. “Voltron can investigate the Robeast. The Atlas can free people from the Galra.”

“If we do that, then Voltron won’t have any backup,” Shiro answered. “Would you be able to handle it?”

“We cannot afford to lose Voltron,” Artemis interjected quietly.

Instead, the Paladins smiled. “We’re stronger than ever,” Keith answered.

Artemis disapproved.

“Nobody listens to me,” Artemis told Holly after the Paladins had gone and the Atlas just cruised between galaxies. “We had a chance to learn more about Honerva’s strategies, and now we’re just risking the Paladins? For what, exactly?”

Holly shook her head. “Commander Shirogane has to have a reason.”

“The pilots can’t even provide any intelligence, thanks to that Druid magic. By stopping the beast before it gets to its destination, we lose a lot of potential intelligence.”

“But wouldn’t that also raise suspicion in Honerva? Foaly said the Robeasts give off specific signals, and I can’t believe that the technology isn’t available to fool Foaly’s sensors. Voltron is known for finding threats and tackling them before they can do harm.”

“Considering we don’t know how much she knows about our operations, you may have a valid point.”

Holly raised an eyebrow. “I may have a point. And I have another one.” She folded her arms across her chest. “What’s up with you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah. You’ve been skulking around. And before you ask, yes, we all noticed.”

Artemis stayed silent for a moment. 

“I wonder if I made the wrong decision to come on the Atlas,” he said carefully. “I assume that my brothers and Juliet are dead, but they could still quite possibly be alive, and every day I wonder if they think about me as often as I do them. I wonder if they know I’m alive. It’s strange that this only bothers me now, come to think of it. On Earth, it didn’t bother me much to know whether or not they had survived because I knew they could fend for themselves. But now that I’m here…” Artemis spread out his hands. “It’s all I can think about.”

Holly sighed. “We were always busy at the Garrison. Now, unless we’re in the middle of a battle, there’s nothing to do.”

“I can’t exactly blame the Paladins for wanting to get out.”

“Nope.”

They sat in silence for a moment.

“The going theory right now is that fairies and Altaeans underwent convergent evolution on two different planets at two different times in the universe’s history. Perhaps the nature of Quintessence ensures that it can only be used in certain ways, which would also explain the shared abilities between the two species. After all, you both have extended lifespans, the power to heal others, and the ability to control others’ actions.”

“But they can kill people who disobey them, whereas fairies can just turn invisible. Which is now basically useless due to thermal imaging.”

“In the past, turning invisible was an evolutionary advantage.”

“Does Allura know about this?”

Artemis shook his head. “I haven’t had a chance to explore the implications with her yet.”

“What about Coran? He’s always around.” 

Artemis shook his head. “It’s likely he already knows.” He thought for a moment. “But perhaps he’ll have insights.” Artemis stood. “After all, the Altaeans have probably already researched this. Their work will be ten thousand years old and yet more advanced than anything Earth could fathom.”

Artemis smiled, and Holly could tell it was genuine.

“Thank you, Holly.”

The Atlas continued on its way, keeping in periodic contact with the Paladins, freeing planets from Galra rule, and stopping to help refugees when possible.

They even took on a defector, a Galran woman named Axca. A soldier worn weary by life itself, wanting to make her own destiny.

Artemis managed to catch Coran on a travel day. No liberation efforts, no detours, just going to the next star system in peace.

“Other species in the universe with the ability to manipulate Quintessence, hm? Of course I know about some of those! Come on, sit down!” And he practically dragged Artemis to the lounge nearest their quarters.

“What do you want to know?”

Artemis explained the theory, showed Coran the data. Artemis hadn’t spent much time with him, but could tell Coran couldn’t wait to share his knowledge. “Well, to start off with, there’s the Balmerans and the Olkari, assuming you’re interested in life forms with the ability to manipulate their planet’s essences. You could say the Galra also manipulate Quintessence, but that’s more of an industrial relationship, rather than the symbiosis that seems to be how your fairies and the Altaeans interact with it.”

“Well, how about we start with the Olkari?”

Coran literally talked for over an hour, becoming increasingly enthusiastic about telling Artemis about the universe and his travels.

Slowly, a small group gathered, first Romelle, then Rizavi. The rest of the MFE pilots joined.

By that point, Artemis had stopped taking notes. He had the information he’d wanted, but couldn’t leave. These fantastic tales -- they were all true. It was amazing.

Artemis sincerely wondered why he hadn’t thought of just talking to Coran in the first place.


	16. Chapter 15

No one saw Axca much for the first several days. Holly had to imagine it being hard -- although the crew of the Atlas had formally accepted Acxa as one of theirs, she had once been an enemy. Sometimes emotions superseded formal declarations of alliance.

Holly finally ran into Acxa at the ship’s gym, late in the middle of the night, alone, working with some weights. Holly walked past her to one of the treadmills and began to run.

Several minutes went by without either of them acknowledging the other.

“Why are you here?” Axca asked.

Holly shook her head. “I can’t sleep. Back on Earth, it must be a full moon. I can hear the People, even though I’m galaxies away.” She glanced over her shoulder. “What about you?”

“There’s fewer people around at night.”

Holly didn’t answer. Axca didn’t really seem in the mood to talk right now. It was really late, after all.

She doubted a majority of people working out at that hour had gone for the conversation.

Holly saw her for the next two days too.

On the second day, they didn’t talk.

“How long are your full moons?” Acxa asked on the third night.

“Three days or so. Why? Do you want me gone?”

“No, it’s not that, just...never mind.”

Holly stopped stretching and looked at her. “What were you going to say?”

“I was just curious. The moon cycles can be very different between planets.”

Holly smiled and gestured to the windows. “It’s amazing. I never thought I’d see the sun every day, much less outer space. I never even dreamed of seeing other planets.”

“Where did you live that you never saw the sky? I thought Earth’s surface was habitable.”

“Well, it is.” Holly gave up on the pretense of exercising. “Fairies were driven below the Earth’s surface before recorded history. It was only when Earth learned of the Galra invasion that we started to work with humans outside of Artemis’s...projects. At the end of the war, with the Coalition around, we finally started moving to the surface again.”

Acxa stayed quiet for a moment. “I understand,” she said. “It was a long time before I ever felt free too.”

“Do you feel free now?”

“I’m not sure.” Acxa also stopped stretching. She crossed her legs. “Do you think I’m a traitor?”

Holly paused for a moment. “No.”

“Why?”

“I’ve seen traitors before. You’re not like them.”

Acxa nodded, a thoughtful expression crossing her face.

They returned to their exercises.

The next day, Acxa actually sat for meals in the cafeteria with the rest of the crew.

Acxa and Holly continued to talk from time to time.

Holly told Acxa about what Earth was like before and about how she’d gotten to know Artemis.

Acxa told her about the abuse she suffered as a half-breed under the Galra reign and how helping Lotor had been her escape.

Artemis finally met Acxa when she sat next to him in one of the common areas while he was reading. She had her own book too, but put it down after a few minutes.

“How’s the Atlas?” Artemis asked. He could feel her eyes on him, questioning.

“It’s fine.”

Artemis returned to his book.

“That’s in Galran.” 

“I noticed.”

“You can read Galran?”

Artemis put the book on his lap. “I’ve always been quite good with languages.”

“Holly says you’re a genius.”

Artemis smiled slightly. “Of course she would say that.”

“Why?”

“Because I am, although I was embarrassingly brazen about that fact as a child. Although you’re quite intelligent too, from what I’ve seen of your personnel file.”

Acxa’s eyes widened. 

“Don’t look surprised. I built half of these systems and know how to get whatever information interests me, regardless of whether or not I have access to that information.”

“Do you think I’m a traitor?”

Artemis stared at her for a minute. “No.”

“You act like you have a problem with me.”

“In the Fowl family, the first thing you learn is that gold is power. The second thing you learn is that everyone not a Butler or a Fowl will betray you. So yes, I did look into you. As I did the entire crew. And I see no reason to doubt your claims after with the information I have. Call it getting sentimental with age.”

“There’s a similar saying amongst the Galra. Trust is a weakness.”

Artemis folded his hands in his lap. “I believe it’s more of a calculated risk. If trust between entities is mutual, both parties can lend strength unto each other and become more powerful. However, then you have the risks of betrayal and destruction. Every possible scenario in which trust could have a good, bad, or neutral outcome is too nuanced to sum up in a statement like that.”

Acxa pursed her lips for a second. “I never said I believed it.”

“I know. But genius requires an audience, and mine is woefully limited around here.”

“Fine. Then do you think people trust me?”

“I think they’ll have to, regardless of whether they want to or not.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Artemis opened his hands. “Then I don’t know. I think some want to trust you. Others are suspicious. But I don’t think anyone thinks you’re a traitor. I think they don’t know what to make of you after hearing that all Galra are bad for so long.”

Acxa nodded. “Thank you, Artemis.” She turned to go, but Artemis stopped her. 

“Why did you have this conversation with me?”

“What?”

“We’ve barely said two words to each other over the past several weeks you were here, and now you want to hear what I have to say. I want to know why.”

“Why?”

“Just curious.”

Acxa looked away. “Holly told me what you did to the People.”

“You saw the parallels between our situations.”

“Yes.”

“Was I able to help?”

Acxa didn’t speak for a moment. “I think so.”

Artemis smiled at her. “Just be honest about your intentions, and people will trust you faster.” He flipped back to where he’d been in his book. “Learned that one the hard way.”

Right before their planned rendezvous with the Paladins, Foaly got a call from Veronica. “These transmissions from the Paladins look suspicious,” she said. “I’m sending them over now.”

A moment’s pause. “Okay, got them,” Foaly said. Veronica could faintly hear Keith’s voice and her responses though the phone’s speaker.

“What’s wrong with this? It sounds completely normal.”

“Keith wouldn’t ever admit to Lance being right. Not to mention the fact that Lance couldn’t navigate his way out of a paper bag.”

“So you think this might be some kind of spoof.”

“Exactly.”

“Looking into that right...now.” 

“Thanks, Foaly.”

She ended the call and waited for a minute.

Her earpiece beeped again a minute later. “You’re right. It’s spoofed, or as the kids say, “deep faked”. Sending you the Paladins’ actual location now.”

“Thanks.” Veronica sent the information straight to Shiro.

When the pilots saw Zethrid hold the blaster against Keith’s head, Griffin asked if anyone had the shot.

But from that far away, at that angle, the chance of hitting Keith was too high. No one even had to say anything except for Rizavi’s frustrated exclamation.

“Guess it’s plan B,” Griffin said, and looked at the passengers in the back of his ship. This wasn’t a normal MFE mission. This time, they had a transport ship alongside the fighters.

Holly shielded herself, becoming a shimmer in the air in the passenger hold.

“Let’s go,” Shiro said, and stood to prepare for the hatch in the center of the hold to open.

Acxa and Holly did the same.

“Ready?” Griffin asked over the intercom.

“Ready,” Shiro answered.

And for a heart-stopping moment, the floor beneath their feet disappeared.

Holly’s boots didn’t hit the ground like Shiro and Acxa’s. Instead, she hovered in the air, trying to get her sights on Zethrid without risking hitting Keith. 

Holly knew she should go for a non-lethal apprehension if possible. She wouldn't let her crew down. She circled the confrontation, wary of the volcano beneath her. Good thing Foaly’s technology generally worked the way it should.

She heard Acxa beneath her, pleading with Zethrid to let her anger go, to finally break this hellish cycle Lotor had started.

But Zethrid hung on to her desperation and pain, until she pointed her blaster at Axca.

Time for making decisions was up. Holly set her Neutrino to stun.

She hit Zethrid’s left shoulder blade, knocking the blaster from her hand and throwing her forward. She landed on top of Keith, who crawled out from underneath her and looked up.

Holly unshielded landed on the cliffside. The heat from the volcano made her sweat through her temperature-controlled suit.

“Thanks,” Keith said.

Meanwhile, Shiro and Acxa restrained the unconscious Zethrid to take her back to the Atlas.

“No problem,” Holly answered, and followed him back to the transport ship.

At Holly’s urging, Artemis reluctantly went to talk to Zethrid.

She’d told him that the things Zethrid had said. Her words had reminded Holly of Artemis, back when he was young and desperate.

So, despite the work on his desk and his general dislike for playing therapist, Artemis went to the holding cells.

“What do you want?” Zethrid snapped at him through the glass.

“To talk.”

“Go away.”

Artemis folded his arms. “I think not.”

“You can’t make me talk to you.”

“Unfortunately. But Commander Short believes our pasts have certain similarities. I’m talking to you by her request. After all, she shot you. She heard your entire conversation with Acxa. And since you have nothing better to do and neither of us wish to be here, you might as well just listen to my piece.”

Zethrid gestured towards him. “Fine. Talk.”

“You claim that all you want is revenge. But revenge is unsatisfying, in the end. Quite a bit like wealth, come to think of it.”

Zethrid glared at him. “It will be satisfying for me.”

“You’re lying to yourself.”

“What does any of this have to do with you?”

“Because just as you resorted to becoming a pirate to achieve your goals, I resorted to kidnapping to achieve mine. It seems like neither of our plans worked out, otherwise we wouldn’t be on the Atlas today.”

“How did your plans fail?” 

“Through a series of mutually beneficial agreements that eventually became a friendship. It turns out that, although all I said I wanted was money, I wanted something more than that.” Artemis smiled briefly at the memory of his mother. 

“And let me guess: you’re hoping I’m going to do the same.”

“It would be nice, yes.”

Zethrid crossed her arms. “No. Helping the people who took everything from me isn’t going to help me get back what I lost. No offense, human, but you’re seriously misguided.”

“I thought the same, until the People saved both my mother and father, going above and beyond to do so.” Artemis turned and walked a few steps away before looking back at the cell. “You might be surprised.”

Within hours of the Paladins’ rendezvous, everyone crowded into the meeting room to hear what they had discovered.

None of it was good news.

Artemis felt relieved, for once, that he’d been wrong.

So much destruction, even with the Paladins in hot pursuit. At least now they’d gotten close enough to do something, if they moved quickly. 

Honerva hadn’t released just one Robeast, but many, each one leaving a trail of devastation in its wake.

And they heard it all in real time as Foaly’s relay alerted Veronica to every major change in movement or activity from one of the Robeasts, and she called it out for the room to hear. 

“They’ve gathered around Sanook,” she said. “Covered in something like a particle barrier. Transmissions say they’re not attacking.”

“They’re not attacking?” Shiro asked.

“They’re just...there,” Veronica said, still tapping away at her tablet. “They’ve got particle barriers up around each Robeast, but that’s all. Other planets are reporting the same thing.”

“Honevera’s trying to separate us,” Allura said. “But there’s no way we can attack every Robeast at once. She’s right about that.”

“Then it’s about triage,” Shiro answered her. “We go where people need us most.”

“What if we split up the Lions?” Keith asked. 

“One Lion doesn’t stand a chance against one Robeast,” Hunk protested. “It’d be suicide.”

“If we were planning on trying to win, yes. But what if we just wanted to slow them down until the ones that risk causing more critical damage have been taken care of?”

“That’s doable,” Pidge answered. “We know how these things behave. We might not be able to beat them one-on-one, but we can survive them.”

Allura shook her head, and stood. A remnant of Altaean royal culture, a gesture that had once brought rooms of people to silence. “We need to attack Oriande. We know Honerva has powers similar to mine and that she can create wormholes. If her base is there, she will be there, and taking out Honerva is going to be the best way to minimize the damage. If we wait, we won’t have a chance.”

“Allura is right,” Foaly agreed. “Remember the Olkari cubes, which can transmit and amplify energy? Remember that blade made of Quintessence-absorbing materials? She’s got a plan to harvest for something, and I highly doubt it’s anything good.”

“We have to stop her at Oriande.”

Keith nodded. “Then we’re going to go there.”

“And the Atlas will accompany you,” Shiro added before turning to Veronica. “Contact Matt and tell him the rebels are in charge of the evacuations. Honerva isn’t going to hold back once we start the assault.”

“On it.”

“Well,” Allura said. She wore a grave expression. “Let the assault on Oriande begin.”


	17. Chapter 16

Artemis, Foaly, Commander Holt, and Slav gathered in the operations center right off the bridge. With four people in there, it got a little crowded, but everyone had to be ready. This was, in Allura’s words, the gravest threat the universe had ever seen.

Holly stood in the hangar with the other pilots, ready to load up if they had to. For once, even Rizavi wasn’t joking around.

Then, the Atlas went through the wormhole.

Immediately, they encountered some kind of interference.

The little operations room became a flurry of activity as the engineers analyzed the signal. Then everything ground to a halt.

“Your socks are black!” Slav screeched at Artemis.

“What the hell?” Foaly exclaimed.

If Artemis’s look could kill, Slav would have been dead on the spot.

“There’s a 99.6 percent chance that the interference is caused by a reality-ending event! Why is no one doing anything about the dichromate resonance chamber?”

Foaly turned to Commander Holt. “Where did this guy come from again?”

Shiro’s voice came through the comms. “We’re still experiencing interference.”

“Put the dichromate resonance chamber into a superposition to stop the mutated antimatter from impacting everything!” Slav demanded, waving his arms. “Are you all stupid?”

Artemis, Foaly, and Commander Holt exchanged a glance. “I’ll do it,” Commander Holt volunteered. 

A headache began behind Artemis’s temples. He wished he could take care of the dichromate resonance chamber instead.

Veronica’s voice came through the intercom just as Artemis turned back to his screen. “We got something.”

“A signal in the noise. I see it too.” Artemis began working to isolate the lone sensible frequencies in the mess before they suddenly disappeared.

“Did you see that?”

“Something’s wrong,” Veronica answered. “The Paladins are saying something’s wrong.”

“Well, it seems like something’s always wrong around here, so we’ll have to make do.”

“I mean, the fact we’re flying into a white hole is pretty—D’Arvit, the cubes! Honerva’s transmitting energy through them!”

Artemis stood up to look at the readings on Foaly’s monitor. “That’s amazing.”

“Absolutely no idea how to disrupt it, though.”

“No,” Artemis agreed.

“Well, it’s a shame we haven’t got an Olkarion on board,” Slav said. “In approximately 10% of universes, we do.”

Artemis turned to Slav. “We do have an Olkarion on board. A prisoner.”

“Then what are you waiting for? Why isn’t he here?”

“Did you not hear the word ‘prisoner’?” Foaly asked. “As in, there’s a reason we’re not just letting him run around here.”

“There’s at least a chance he’ll understand these cubes.” Artemis stood. “Keep an eye on that signal, Slav.”

“Are you serious?”

“We don’t have the time to just “figure it out” right now. If he knows and is willing to help us, taking the chance is worth it.”

Artemis took a weapon and walked to the cells. Beneath his feet, the Atlas shook with every blow--given or taken--in the battle outside.

His anxiety buzzed inside his head until he stood outside the glass, facing the prisoners.

“What’s going on?” Zethrid asked. 

“We need your help,” Artemis said, wincing as the ship shook again. “Specifically, we need your Olkari’s help.”

“What’s in it for me?” the Olkari asked.

“Not dying in a fiery inferno and potentially saving the universe, with all of the recognition and fame you would get for such a heroic action. A chance to avenge the deaths on your planet too.”

“Hm,” he mused.

“Please,” Artemis said. “Please.”

“We’re going to die if he doesn’t help you?” Zethrid asked.

Artemis nodded. He had to blink back tears as the sudden thought struck him that, if he died here, he would never find out what had happened to the twins. And likely, they’d never know what happened to him. 

Artemis returned to the operations room with three prisoners in tow. “And I didn’t even have to shoot them,” he commented wryly.

“You wouldn’t have hit them anyway.”

The Olkari ignored the banter and examined the control panel, placing his hand on it and letting the understanding of the systems come to him. “Beautiful fusion of Earth’s primitive technology with Altaean magic with...what would this be? I haven’t seen it before.”

“Fairy,” Foaly said proudly. “Fairy magic, fairy tech. Specifically, centaur.”

“Their magic seems to be related to Altaean magic, but different too,” Artemis explained.

“The more important thing here might be the energy cubes. We need you to help us disrupt them,” Foaly reminded everyone.

The Olkari smiled. “Oh, I think I can do more than just disrupt them.”

Holly’s jaw dropped as she saw images of the Atlas appear around her, perfect copies in every direction.

The Robeasts froze for a minute, pilots caught off-guard.

“Use this opportunity to target their crystals!” Shiro commanded through her earpiece. Holly’s focus returned to the fight as the Robeasts began to attack the imitations floating in the air.

She grinned. Foaly was a genius.

The operations room had fallen back into silence, except for exchanges with the bridge and the occasional hurried directions and suggestions. Commander Holt came back, had the situation explained, and picked up where they needed him.

Every so often, Slav would mutter some expletive-filled nonsense about Artemis’s socks.

“Oh my god.” Artemis stopped to watch the sensor data roll across the screen.

“What?” Foaly came up behind Artemis. “Oh. That’s not good.”

“Honerva is ripping apart time itself.”

“What?” Commander Holt asked.

Then everything went black. Every screen, every peripheral, every sensor, every holographic model. Everything not anchored down began to float.

Artemis listened for the vents and heard nothing.

The ship had shut down.

Before anyone could say anything, the lights came back on, the vents began to blow air again, and the computers showed their startup screens. Anything that had begun floating fell back down.

“The thera-magnetic oscillators need reset,” Slav announced. “The time-slippage is impacting the ship’s power crystal.”

“He’s right,” Commander Holt agreed. “Those crystals are supposed to be able to last indefinitely. But we didn’t test them against the impact of time itself.”

“What do we do about it?” Foaly asked.

Artemis’s mind envisioned Holly falling, bleeding, to the ground on Hybras, taking her last breath, then shifting, falling, being alive somewhere else as Artemis manipulated the time fluctuations to bring her back.

“We need observations. There has to be a pattern.” At Foaly’s glare, Artemis elaborated. “This isn’t any different from the time I was on Hybras, and seeing as I’m the only one who has witnessed this phenomenon firsthand, my advice is probably best for dealing with it. Foaly, Commander Holt, you keep an eye on the crystal. Everyone else, we need to be monitoring this.”

Once the computers booted back up, they got to work.

“We can’t shut it down, these patterns are totally random!” Foaly exclaimed in exasperation. “What about that algorithm for locating demons, could that do anything—’

Foaly’s train of thought stopped abruptly.

“Whatever it is we were trying to achieve has failed,” Slav stated, then slapped Artemis upside the head with one of his tiny little arms. “Because of your socks!”

Artemis put a hand to his ear and pushed Slav away. “If you’re not going to be helpful, you can leave.”

“Our personal problems can wait,” Commander Holt said, watching his screen intently. “The stakes are too high for us to give up now.”

Artemis glared at Slav. 

Slav shrugged his shoulders--all of them.

Artemis supposed this had to have been rather similar to working with Orion all those years ago, and shuddered.

“He’s cutting down the Robeasts,” Commander Holt narrated in horror.

But from the Atlas, there was nothing they could do.

“Our time is up. We’re too close to the white hole,” Coran’s voice came over the speakers. “We’re going to need to generate a wormhole out of here. The Atlas is too close to achieve escape velocity.”

“Understood,” Commander Holt answered.

“Allocating power to the generator,” Foaly said, tapping the screen in front of him.

“Shiro, do you see any signs of the Paladins?” Commander Holt asked.

“Negative. But they’ll be here.”

“The white hole is collapsing quite quickly, the time destabilization puts us at a lot of risk. We need to get out of here!” Slav squacked as he typed away with two arms and waved the others.

“Wait, I can see them!” Coran’s voice said.

“Go! Now, Coran!”

The Atlas seemed to collectively exhale as it went through the wormhole.


	18. Chapter 17

This time, Artemis stood at the head of the briefing room.

“What happened at the white hole was a reality-tearing event. Honerva opened a conduit through time, allowing Lotor to come from the past. This has happened on Earth before, with disastrous results. In fact, the Crash occurred due to incomplete resolution of the timeline divergence after an event like this. I’ve experienced these phenomena before. I’ve researched them. And I have some suggestions for actions we need to take in order to protect our reality.

“Our first priority should be sending Lotor back from whence he came. The Crash was directly caused by the death of a time-traveler that came to the future. This disabled many vital technologies on Earth they developed. Although Lotor hasn’t made that kind of contribution to the galaxy, the fallout of his death would likely be unexpected in similar ways.

“Another thing we need to do is prevent Honerva from opening more holes through time. Traveling changes people in...unexpected ways. I once swapped eyes with Commander Short--if you look, she still has one of her own brown eyes, and one of my blue eyes.”

Artemis paused and Holly’s face went furiously red as everyone started trying to get a look at her eyes. “I no longer have her eye, thanks to my brief death. Other things I have witnessed when time traveling include growing older, growing younger, not aging, and gaining magic. And although my experience with time travel is limited to approximately six trips, I find that the more stressful the travel is, the more likely it is for these things to occur.”

“Hold on for a second. Brief death?” Lance asked. 

“It’s a long story,” Holly muttered.

“My untimely death is a story for another day, as it does not involve time travel.”

“Kinda did,” Foaly muttered. “Commander Short’s eye killed you.”

Artemis glared at Foaly.

“My point is, whomever she sends through, or whomever she brings back, may be changed. Although what I’ve experienced has been relatively harmless, who knows what might happen to her victims? These phenomena are almost totally unstudied, to my knowledge, except in the People’s labs.

“Finally, I have some good news. We have an advantage in that time travel requires obscene amounts of power. There is no way for Honerva to hide it, nor for her to perform it away from a power source. Not by herself, at least, and I doubt her narcissism allows her to see any of her colony as more than expendable. It’s why Oriande was so valuable. It had so much potential energy right there for the taking.

“We can observe the galaxy and scan for energy sources that could facilitate time travel, and cross-reference those against huge energy surges in the area. We have the entire Voltron Coalition as resources for this effort. This gives us access to a lot of the galaxy at once, provided we can provide some metrics to scan for. 

“Time travel is powerful, I admit. But it shouldn’t render us hopeless.”

As the days passed, the Atlas traveled to the sites of the known Robeasts to recover their pilots and worked out the logistics of mass-scanning for time-travel signatures.

Artemis and Foaly worked in the operations room, running data through the supercomputing cluster, when Kincade and Rizavi came in.

Artemis turned away from his work and turned to the visitors. Visitors were unusual here when there were phones and intercoms on the Atlas. In fact, Artemis wasn’t sure if the pilots had ever visited.

“What brings you here?” Artemis asked, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands.

“We’re filming a documentary,” Rizavi said. “Of the Atlas. We’re interviewing people.”

“What she means is, would you mind if we interview you? And it’s more of a video journal than a documentary…”

Artemis got the feeling that Rizavi had taken Kicade’s project and run with it.

“Sure.”

Artemis waited for them to set up the small, hovering camera.

“What’s your role aboard the Atlas?” Kincade asked. 

“I am here in a research capacity. My knowledge of the People’s magic and the integrated technologies on the Atlas--”

Rizavi interrupted him. “Yeah, no. Let’s talk about something more interesting, like that meeting last week. You said you died.”

“I did.”

“Well, how?”

“Magic.”

“Did they just fire a spell at you, like,” Rizavi imitated waving a wand, “alakazam!”

Artemis just stared at her. “No. This isn’t Harry Potter, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Well, if you won’t tell us how you died, then how did you come back?” Kincade asked. “Because no offense, but you don’t look dead to me.”

Artemis smiled. “I had myself cloned.”

“Impossible,” Rizavi scoffed.

“Not with fairy technology and a few loopholes in some ancient spells.”

Holly was practicing at the firing range when Allura approached her.

The somber look on her face told Holly all she needed to know.

“They still won’t talk?”

Allura shook her head. “No.”

“I’m sorry.”

Silence hung heavy in the air.

“What we talked about before,” Allura said tentatively, “I’d like for you to do it.”

Holly looked up at her. “Are you sure?”

“We have to try. They’re the only ones who might know anything.”

“I’m sorry it had to come to this.”

“Me too.”

Holly sat across from the Altaean man shackled to the table. Tavo, his name was. Romelle remembered him from the colony.

“Have the Altaeans given up?” he asked.

“No,” Holly said. She began to let the magic drip into her voice as her own guilt about having to use her magic in this way, against an innocent, brainwashed, unarmed person. “Tavo, look at me.”

“Your voice,” he said, smiling a bit. “It’s beautiful. It sounds like a choir.”

“Does it now?”

“Yes.”

From his blank expression, Holly knew she had him hooked. “What’s Honerva’s plan?”

“She will use Lotor to destroy you. She will destroy everything, and recreate the universe in her image. Voltron will be no more, and Honerva will reign.”

And with that, he stiffened, going rigid in the chair before throwing his head back, eyes wide. His arms and legs jerked back. The shackles attached to the table became taut. His chair tipped over, leaving Tavo hanging from the table by his wrists.

Holly knocked her chair backwards as she leapt up, orange magic already threading its way across her fingertips.

On the other side of the room, two researchers in full biohazard kits entered, each carrying a medical kit.

Holly’s hands hit Tavo first, and she grabbed his shoulder, exhaling. “Heal,” she whispered, and the sparks flowed towards Tavo’s torso, disappearing underneath his skin.

“He’s going to be okay,” she said, watching the sparks.

The figures didn’t say anything.

Then, something black burst from Tavo’s chest and everything happened at once,

One of the figures grabbed Holly’s wrist and pulled her back, yanking her away from Tavo. She shouted while the other figure used the magnetic key to the shackles to unlock them.

The figure that grabbed Holly had done so with an iron grip. She struggled as they dragged her from the room, but couldn’t get free.

“What was that?” she exclaimed, turning to see Dr. Holt and Commander Shirogane standing in front of the observation window console.

“We were prepared in case what happened with Luca happened again,” Commander Holt said gravely.

Holly furrowed her brow. “Then it’s not like the fairy  _ mesmer _ . It’s more like something’s opened a Berserker Gate, and put the spirits under a thrall.”

“A Berserker Gate?”

Holly nodded solemnly. “Dead fair--magic users, placed under a spell. When the first lock opens, they rise and possess the living to follow the orders of the person who opened the gate. Depending on how the second lock is opened,” Holly swallowed, and said the words, the words she’d said as testimony after Artemis’s death, “either all magical souls within a certain radius of the gate will cease to exist, or all nonmagical souls outside the radius will cease to exist.”

Commander Holt went pale. “This could be a massacre.”

Holly couldn’t think of a response to that.

“We can’t. This can’t--” Commander Holt stopped and took a deep breath. “We need to get that thing contained. Go--”

“Yes, sir.”

Holly went to the operations room and used her biometrics to let herself in. She shut the door and locked it behind her.

Artemis and Foaly sat at their consoles. Veronica sat on a crate.

“What’s wrong?” Artemis asked. Holly’s expression had told him everything he needed to know.

“We have an idea of what Honerva’s up to.”

“And it’s worse than what we already thought she was up to?” Foaly asked.

“She found a Berserker Gate.”

“Where?” Artemis asked, at the same time Foaly said, “That is bad.”

“What’s a Berserker Gate?”

Artemis started to explain, but after two sentences of history, Foaly interrupted. “Big magic thing, people get possessed, and lots of people might die.”

“Thank you, Foaly,” Holly said.

“Okay. Yeah, that’s bad.”

“And the part Foaly forgot to mention is that it can only be closed by the person who opened it,” Artemis said.

Veronica’s eyes went wide. “So wait. Let me get this straight: Unless Honerva plays nice, we’re all going to die?”

“Yup,” Foaly said.

“How did you discover this?” Artemis asked Holly.

“I was interviewing Tavo, one of the Altaeans,” Holly said. “At Allura’s request, with the  _ mesmer _ . Tavo said her name, then collapsed. Then something like a shadow came out of his chest. They’re containing it now, but I think it might have been a manifestation of a soul.”

“That explains the long gap between the first robeast and all the others,” Foaly agreed. “She needed to build the gate, after all. Or find one. And after the analysis of Opal’s black magic, we know that it couldn’t have been easy or simple.”

“And Opal didn’t even build the gate. She just stumbled across it!” Holly exclaimed.

“I think you’re missing one disturbing fact,” Veronica said quietly. “She needs souls to do this. So where did she get the souls? You’re talking about an upcoming massacre, but how many have already died?”

Foaly began to type furiously on his keyboard, sifting through the huge amount of data from the Galra and what the Atlas had gathered through its travels.

Veronica stood, holding her tablet by her side. “I need to talk to Shiro. We need to figure out what to do.”

“I’m sure Commander Holt is already talking to him,” Holly said. “He saw the whole thing.”

“Good,” Veronica said. “Well, not good, but you know what I mean.”

She walked out, and the door shut behind her.

“Any other brilliant suggestions?” Artemis asked the sullen room.

A few days later, the announcement that the Atlas was heading to celebrate a holiday on a mostly subterranean planet (well, maybe to act as security too), shocked Artemis.

He went to find Commander Holt.

“Why are we celebrating a holiday?” he hissed into the engine room. “Doesn’t Commander Shirogane know what’s going on?”

“Well, we haven’t decided how much to tell the crew about “what’s going on”, and until then, we don’t want to make any suspicious movements. Voltron offering a charitable service so the another planet can have a nice holiday fits exactly into the impression we want Honerva to have of us,” Commander Holt said, then sighed. “Unfortunately, I offered to take over monitoring the soul and its containment for the day so the other technicians could celebrate. But I’m sure Katie and Colleen will have a good time. I just wish I could see it.”

“How about I take over for you?” Artemis offered. 

“But don’t you want to see the celebration?”

“You should go. You may never get to celebrate Clear Day again with your family.”

Commander Holt’s face lit up. “Thank you, Artemis.” He checked his watch. “The shift starts in about three hours, so just head over there whenever. Now I need to go get ready.” He opened a door at the far end of the room and shouted inside. “Slav! I’m headed to Clear Day!”

Artemis took a seat at the observation window and waited.

Part of him wanted to join the rest of the crew at Clear Day.

Another part of him knew he was too old for childish fun and understood what might be at stake if no one watched the soul.

So he watched the data, scroll past on the screen and kept an eye on the video feed or the black shadow bouncing around the container, and let his mind wander.

Myles and Beckett would have loved this, Artemis thought.

They would have loved being on the Atlas. Myles would have loved to see the cutting-edge technology. Beckett would have been awed by the defensive and offensive capabilities of the ship.

If they were here, he could have gone to Clear Day with his family too.

Artemis jumped in surprise when someone knocked on the door. He opened it to see Allura. 

“I thought all the Paladins were at Clear Day.”

“I was tired, so I decided to stay here. But I was thinking...that soul...what if it’s another Altaean?”

“From what Romelle’s told us about the colony, it almost certainly is. I’m sorry,” Artemis added, knowing that it had to be hard to have her people so close after thinking that they were gone forever. And then to keep losing more.

“I know it sounds silly,” Allura fidgeted with her hands, “but could I just go in and...and say a few words? There are some Altaean last rites, and I was wondering...I know it won’t do anything...but maybe…”

Artemis could see her discomfort and understood. He saw himself in her shoes after Father’s sudden heart attack when he’d died in the ambulance. Too soon for anyone to say anything. Too soon for a proper goodbye. 

And he remembered seeing Romelle after Luca had died.

“Of course. But you can’t touch anything. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” She nodded, and suddenly her arms were around Artemis, wrapping him in a hug. “Thank you.”

She walked in and stood before the containment chamber, watching. Her mouth moved, but the cameras in that room weren’t wired for audio. At one point, she reached out, then pulled her hand back, looking forlorn.

Artemis remembered his own arm going through the barrier of the Berserker’s Gate before his magical eye stopped him from leaving.

His heart hurt for her, a sensation his younger self would have dismissed out of hand.

But that abruptly stopped when she slammed her hand against the biometric sensor and the soul left the chamber, flooding into her.

Artemis used his own handprint to open the door, running to Allura.

But she had already hit the ground.

When the crew arrived back at the Atlas, Artemis faced them with a heavy heart.

Allura slept for roughly two days.

Artemis didn’t visit her.

Lance never left her side.

“It’s not your fault,” Coran said. “I was supposed to be watching her.”

Holly echoed the same sentiment.

But Artemis couldn’t avoid her forever. Coran called a meeting for the Paladins, Artemis, and Shiro.


	19. Chapter 18

Artemis noticed that Allura looked much better than when she’d gone in to see the entity. 

“Good. Everyone’s here,” Conran said. 

“We’ve got a plan we want to run by everyone,” Pidge said. 

“We know how to find Honerva,” Keith added.

Artemis took the last seat at the table.

Then Allura spoke. “By absorbing the soul, I am linked to Honerva, whether or not we use that link. It may be possible to use Voltron’s shared consciousness to access the void. From there, we can follow the magic back to its source: Honerva.”

“And through that, we can find out where she is,” Pidge added.

Artemis started shaking his head.

“I mean, you did kinda say we needed to watch her and see what she was going for. We have a chance to do that now,” Hunk said.

“That was when we didn’t know where the Robeasts were coming from or why. But now we know both of those things. And we even know some of her tactics. She’s going to have to come out sometime. Whatever she’s planning will be impossible to hide.”

“But then it might be too late,” Keith answered, before turning to the commander. “Shiro? What do you think?”

“I’ve spent a lot of time in the infinite void, and it’s not somewhere you can fight her,” Shiro said slowly, tracing patterns on the table with his human and prosthetic fingers. “She would almost certainly win. But if you think there might even be a slight chance that we could learn something about Lotor or Honerva that might be to our advantage…”

“I have also been in the infinite void,” Artemis said, his voice beginning to rise. “And Commander, you know as well as I do that they might not come back.”

“No way,” Hunk said. “Why do you shoot down everything?”

“I mean, I think he’s right,” Lance muttered.

“When I died, that’s where I went. The infinite void. Just an endless plain, on which I watched my worst memories play out over and over again until my body was prepared. There’s no heaven nor hell, not when you die on the wrong side of the Berserker Gate. There’s nothing except for you and your worst fears and greatest losses. So please forgive me if I don’t want anybody else to have that experience!”

A moment of silence. “That’s how you died?” Pidge asked.

Artemis nodded. “I sacrificed myself to open the second lock. My soul was human, but my body was tainted by fairy magic I’d stolen in a time tunnel. So when the gate closed so that the powers of Danu were released upon the fairies inside the circle, I was also affected. But unlike them, my soul didn’t cease to exist.”

“See, that’s what I mean,” Lance said. “We don’t understand it, and it has the added bonus that dying there means we don’t get to do all the Paladin stuff we still need to do here.”

“But Lance, that’s why we have to do it,” Allura said, placing a hand on his arms as he scowled at the table. “We’re the only people who can. There’s a lot we still need to do for the universe. But right now, it needs us to find Honerva most.”

Everyone looked at Artemis. He sighed. “Well, if you’re going to do it, let’s make sure you come out alive in the end.”

So Artemis and Foaly wired the pilots with neurological sensors, and watched as Voltron went on its way, the monitors set to alarm in the operations room at the slightest deviation from the norm.

“I don’t like this either,” Foaly said, “but then, I’ve never been a fan of having my friends visit alternate planes of existence.”

And then they watched, unable to do anything.

When the patterns on the EEGs began to return to normal, Artemis nearly fell out of his seat as relief flooded through his body. He laughed.

“They’re okay!”

Foaly clapped him on the back and grinned. “And to think you ever doubted them, Mud Boy.”

But their faces quickly fell, as one didn’t recover.

Allura.

The whole ship seemed stunned by what had happened. The Paladins didn’t seem to know how to react.

No one did.

In the end, it was up to Artemis to figure out what had happened.

They ran scans, hooked her up to all sorts of machines. They resorted to nonmagical medicine, as everyone knew by now what had happened to Tavo.

But in the end, he stood in front of Coran shaking his head.

“I have no idea what happened to her.”

“You did your best,” Coran said softly, hanging his head. “I should never have let her go. I should have spoken up more loudly. I knew it was too dangerous. I thought they could do it anyway, they always have…”

“They might still be able to do it. Allura has no neurological damage. She’s breathing on her own, and all her vitals are stable, and have been since she was first examined. Apart from the not-waking-up, she could be just sleeping. If this were any other scenario, no one would even be worrying.”

Coran nodded, and wiped a hand across his face. He might have had tears in his eyes, or perhaps he was just exhausted, Artemis couldn’t tell.

“We have to have hope. Can’t give up now. She wouldn’t--won’t like that if we do.” Coran gave Artemis an attempt at a smile. “Thank you for watching out for them.”

When Artemis got back to the operations room, Foaly whinnied at him. “You need sleep.”

“Sleep takes a backseat to wormhole signatures. What’d Veronica find?”

Foaly opened a holographic interface and displayed a spherical map of the surrounding universe, then tapped the location, which lit up orange. Another orange dot lit up on the opposite side of the sphere. “The wormhole signature is there, and we’re over here. And our Altaean is out of commission, so…” Foaly shrugged. “Wanna build a wormhole generator?”

Artemis pulled over a chair and stroked the day-old stubble on his chin as he examined the map. “There really isn’t a way over there.”

“Nope.”

Artemis stood. “Well, tell Commander Holt we’re coming down there. We need to bounce some ideas around, and quickly.”

Fortunately, they were derailed by a proper crew meeting, where actual plans were made. Holly’s main contribution to the immediate plans was following Artemis around and nagging him until he went to his quarters.

Foaly joined the weaponry team in the engine room. Pidge didn’t seem pleased with the schematics presented to her. “You really think we can turn our current cannons into a Thorium array?” she asked.

“Well, everything’s there…”

“Why bleed energy out into space when we can use it?” Foaly asked. “Reduce, reuse, recycle, as you humans have hypocritically said.”

“What? Why are we hypocrites for teaching children about recycling?” Pidge asked, confused.

“Fairy waste management puts your pitiful systems to shame.”

“Okay, everyone, let’s focus,” Commander Holt said.

“All we will need for this new cannon is an atomic trajectory and that extra power!” Slav exclaimed. “And to jump up and down on one foot, count to three, and shout the name of our favorite metal, color, or planetary atmosphere!”

He demonstrated for them.

“One, two, three, aluminum!”

“Listen, Slav, I know you were making a list of what we need to do,” Foaly said carefully, “but I don’t think that really needs to be on it.”

“You don’t think living life needs to be on a list of things to do?” Slav shrieked.

Pidge and Commander Holt exchanged a long-suffering glance.

Foaly sighed.

Meanwhile, Holly headed to the Balmera with Coran, Hunk, and Romelle, piloting a small pod from the Atlas. It was an easy flight, mostly autopilot, and Romelle seemed incredibly enthusiastic, both pestering Coran with questions and answering the little quizzes on Altaean culture he’d devised for her.

Meanwhile, Hunk filled Holly in on the Balmera -- well, on everything the briefings didn’t cover. 

“You’re probably gonna think it’s not as cool as we do, considering you lived under the ground for most of history and everything, and they live under the ground too, but like, they have all of this beautiful crystal that glows and--did you guys, like, have light underground? Or do you also have really good night vision from being in the dark all the time?”

“There was artificial lighting in Haven City, like track lights along the ceiling that brightened and dimmed in a 24-hour cycle. We didn’t live in the dark. What do you take us for, trolls?”

“Trolls exist?”

“Yup,” Holly confirmed. “And you don’t want to meet one, trust me.”

“Okay. Good to know.” Hunk continued his discussion of the Balmera. “So their crystals glow. And they can communicate through the ground, I forgot to mention that. They have an entire language that’s just vibrations sent through the planet.”

“Wow.”

“I’m so glad we found one here. The Galra have been harvesting for their Quintessence, and without Altaeans to restore them, they die. So there’s not many left. What were the chances?”

“Slim to none, probably.”

Hunk grinned. “And that’s what makes this extra cool!”

“One, two, three, yellow!” Slav shouted.

Foaly was ready to grind the greenish ferret-alien-penguin thing into the carpet beneath his hooves.

Pidge seemed to share the sentiment. She clenched her jaw until Slav started counting again.

“Why do you keep doing that?” she shouted.

“My question is, why are you not joining me? I have explained the principles behind my extrapolation twice already. Surely that should be enough if you are as bright as your father says you are?”

“Pidge, go jump and shout colors,” Foaly said. “Make the alien happy.”

“What? Why? Why me?”

“Because even though it’s nonsense, it might make him shut up faster. Also, you’re young and spry, your father’s old, and I’m a centaur. We don’t do things that involve jumping on one leg. In fact, we can’t. Our legs don’t work like that.”

“You doubt me?” Slav shouted.

“It’s a nice theory, but now is not the time to really, you know, be building a computing array to test it. So yeah, until we can do that, it’s nonsense.”

“But I have already done that!” Slav protested. 

Commander Holt turned around and held up a hand to silence Slav. “How can you call me old when you’ve lived for over a hundred years? Doesn’t that seem hypocritical?”

“Would you like to jump on one leg too?”

“But I have built the data array! For the Galra!”

The room went dead silent.

“What,” Pidge said.

“But they dismantled it. AND CALLED IT A TOY!” Slav suddenly shouted, clenching his tiny hands into fists. “It was not a toy.”

“If we gave you the materials,” Commander Holt asked slowly, “could you rebuild it?”

“Ha! In my sleep! In fact, I have been doing it this whole time for fun!”

Commander Holt, Foaly, and Pidge exchanged a glance.

“You are either a complete genius, completely insane, or both,” Foaly said. “And I’m not sure which one I want it to be.”

“I am--”

“Either way we’re gonna need a copy of your notes.”

“Fine, if only you will stop ignoring the dire straits in which our reality is caught!”

Foaly looked at Pidge and raised an eyebrow. She shot him a deadly glare, then stood.

“One, two, three, palladium!”

Foaly smiled. “Now that’s what’s gonna save the universe.”

The Balmera was just as impressive as Hunk had said it would be, if not moreso.

When the Balmerans realized Holly could speak their language, they surrounded her, tugging her hair, her ears, examining her suit until Coran pulled them away.

This, plus long-lost Altaeans and a Paladin of Voltron earned them only the best treatment, including eagerly giving up a crystal in exchange for Romelle’s healing ritual.

Holly found it interesting that, even though she had no Altaean magic whatsoever, the actions needed to channel her Quintessence into the crystal planet came naturally to her, without a struggle. She smiled widely, thrilled at the power coursing through her.

It sent chills down Holly’s spine.

People experiencing power that they never should have had under normal circumstances had created hell in her life, from Artemis Fowl, to Turnball Root, to Opal Koboi.

The rational part of her knew Romelle and her innocence, knew she wouldn’t go the same way.

But Holly’s mind was guarded and she watched the ceremony with apprehension.

As they prepared to leave, Holly received a communication from the Atlas.

“We’re almost done here,” she said. “Hunk’s taking pictures of the Balmerans.”

“Hey, we have to remember our new friends,” Hunk called over to her.

“Unfortunately, there isn’t a crystal here that will be able to help us.”

Coran joined the channel. “She’s misrepresenting the situation. We have it all under control. We simply need the Yellow Lion.”

Holly sighed.

“For what purpose?” Commander Shirogane asked.

“Well, for moving the crystal, of course!”

“Do what you need to. We will wormhole to your location when you give the word,” Allura answered. 

Everyone did a double-take.

“You’re awake!” Coran exclaimed. And from Holly’s perspective, seemed to do a small happy dance right where he stood. “How are you?”

“Fine.”

“Sorry to interrupt your reunion, but we could use that Lion, like, right now.” Hunk said.

“Then we will see you shortly.”

Artemis woke when he felt the ship move into combat.

He put on his glasses and sat at his computer, calling Foaly over the intercom as he used one of his personal backdoors into the Atlas’s systems to view the security cameras and event logs.

“What’s going on?”

“Well, Sleeping Beauty, we’ve updated our weapons, found a big-ass Balmera, Allura woke up, and we wormholed over to meet a witch. Who, in case you haven’t guessed, really didn’t want to see us.”

And indeed, Artemis saw Allura standing on the bridge in the wormhole interface, turning to talk to the officers behind her.

“Did we not prohibit her access after the last time she went into a coma?”

“Commander overrode that.”

Artemis watched her begin to call a wormhole.

Then Allura turned and vaulted the railing, diving for the essential command above her.

The security alarms began to wail, their red lights flashing. Artemis didn’t need the stimulus to understand the gravity of the situation. He gritted his teeth.

_ Think! _

On screen, Iverson pulled Allura off Shiro, pushing her to the ground.

Artemis pushed that image aside, to another monitor, then pulled up the cell blocks.

The Altaeans had gotten out. Artemis didn’t need to know what they were saying to know where they were going.

There was nothing he could do sitting at a console. Physical access settings, outside the cell blocks, couldn’t be overridden. 

Supposedly this should have prevented everyone from being trapped in the event their ship was hacked.

This scenario hadn’t been planned for.

And there was nothing Artemis could do.

He couldn’t fight. He couldn’t stop them. He could only watch.

And feel the crushing weight of defeat as the staff on the bridge, too distracted by Allura’s tooth-and-claw efforts to wreak havoc, couldn’t stop the other Altaeans.

He saw them get the crystal using Allura’s biometrics.

Then every light and every screen went dark once again.

Holly and Hunk came through the wormhole with the Balmera, not expecting what they saw.

Five pillars, purple sigils floating above, hovered in the space where Altaea would have been. 

And Honerva’s mech...she’d taken the Sincline suit and forced it into her image. 

Not to mention the Robeasts driving the other Lions back and forcing them away.

She tried to open up a frequency to the Atlas, but only heard Hunk, trying the same thing.

“Something’s happened. They’re not answering us,” she cut into Hunk’s repeated hailings. “I’m going to investigate. You need to protect the Balmera.”

“With the combined power of Voltron, she doesn’t stand a chance.”

She turned back to Coran and Romelle. “Hold on, guys.”

And she took the tiny craft at top speed towards the Atlas.

She didn’t even reach her destination before Honerva had targeted the Balmera and began to leech its Quintessence.


	20. Chapter 19

As she landed, contact with the Atlas returned.

“Oh, thank Frond,” she breathed as chatter filled her ears.

“Coran, Romelle, and I have landed in bay 3B,” she announced. 

When the airlock repressurized, Artemis ran in, looking like he’d just rolled out of bed. 

“What’s going on? Why couldn’t we reach you?” Holly demanded.

“The Altaeans. They turned on us, Allura too. You’re needed in the medical bay. And Coran, you need to come with me.”

“Allura? Is she okay?” Coran asked.

“Yes, but barely. Allura drained them until they were husks of their former selves.” Artemis sighed. “For the moment, we need to assume they will be fine, because we need you to help figure out our next move.”

“Our next move?” Coran looked bewildered.

“The Atlas is entirely on backup power. Honerva has drained the crystal, the Altaeans, and the Balmera. And, from the looks of it, she’s opening up another portal through time. So we really do need to hurry.”

When Holly reached the medical bay, it looked horrible.

Every bed was full, and all the Altaeans had machines hooked up to them. Machines to keep their bodies alive while they waited for a chance to be saved.

But worst of all were the ones without machines.

The Atlas simply wasn’t supplied for this much devastation within her walls.

Nurses used bags connected to oxygen tanks and lines and CPR to try and keep them alive.

“This way,” one of the doctors said, grabbing her arm and leading her to Allura, all the way in the back.

Holly only paused briefly.

Others needed her more.

This might not even work.

What if she only released more souls?

She pushed her doubts aside and placed her hands on Allura’s leg. “Heal,” she whispered. The sparks flowed from her fingers like a trickle of water right before a dam burst and let everything rush out. Within moments, Holly struggled to hold on as the larger woman seized and jerked beneath her touch, inhumanly strong. Magic rushed from her fingers, encasing Allura within an orange cocoon.

Machines connected to her began to beep, shriek, and pop as the magic overloaded them, yet the nurses didn’t dare pull them away. Not that they’d have been able to, not with the storm around their patient.

Instead, they stared, a mix of horror and anticipation on their faces. Even the ones manually pumping lungs and hearts watched.

After what felt like an eternity, the torrent of magic stopped. The last sparks seeped into Allura’s skin.

Holly lifted her hands from the princess and waited. She couldn’t hear anything beside her own breathing.

Then Allura shifted under the sheets, fidgeting with the tubing and wires before opening her eyes.

“Commander Short. What’s going on?” she asked wearily. “Where--oh my God!” She sat straight up, knocking over an IV line, to see the rest of the room.

“Honerva,” Holly said tiredly. 

“Princess, you need to go,” one of the doctors said, disconnecting the rest of the machinery hurriedly. Allura still looked too stunned to wave him off. “Voltron needs you. We won’t survive without it.”

“But--”

“I’m taking care of the rest,” Holly said firmly, though she knew it probably wasn’t true. There wasn’t enough magic on the ship to do that, not now. But Allura couldn’t know that. They needed her out there fighting, not in here worrying. “They’ll be okay.”

“But--”

“The universe needs you,” Holly said insistently, looking her in the eyes. “You can’t help them if the universe is destroyed.”

Allura finally sighed and nodded, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. “Of course. But when I return, Commander--these people had better be alive.”

Holly spoke past her exhaustion and the lump in her throat. “Understood.”

“Those wings are using the Quintessence she’s gathered to open the time tunnel again,” Artemis explained. “A two-way Komar that can both emit and absorb.”

“It’s like the destruction of the Castle,” Coran whispered. He looked horrified, but then realization dawned on his face. “Wait! The pyramid!”

“What?” Foaly asked.

“It’s where she would need to control all this. If we can reach it, we can stabilize or destroy her tunnel. And, knowing she’s out here with her Robeasts, I doubt she’s too focused on what’s going on outside to notice a few people sneaking around inside.”

“But we can’t just pull the energy from maintaining the portal into closing or stabilizing it. Where’s the extra energy coming from?”

“The Altaeans, of course!”

Foaly and Artemis exchanged a glance.

“About that…” Foaly said quietly. “That’s not going to work.”

And he explained the recent events to Coran.

Watching his face was like watching hope shatter in slow motion.

Sitting in the transport carrier escorted by Rizavi and Kincade, Artemis couldn’t help but worry.

Slav had told them their chances weren’t good, especially if they couldn’t find an energy source.

And since Honerva dumped all her available quintessence into the time tunnel, he didn’t see where they could get the energy to keep it sustained.

“Oh my god,” Coran said, suddenly standing and pressing his hands against the carrier window. 

Romelle turned too, and her eyes went wide. A blue glow illuminated their faces.

“What are they doing?” she asked.

Artemis turned to look too. Outside the window hovered three or four glowing Balmera.

It was beautiful. It was exactly what they needed.

Artemis grinned. He couldn’t help the feeling of hope that surged through him.

“It’s a convuldrum,” Coran explained. “A converging of Balmera. It happens when one of their own needs help. They’ve sensed the injured Balmera and come to help.”

“Do you know what this means?” Commander Holt asked. “We can use the energy to stabilize and close the tunnel!”

Honerva’s arrogance was almost as stupid and overconfident as Opal Koboi’s.

The pyramid was a clearly-labeled, unlocked ghost town, only requiring Kincade to dispatch a single guard and use his handprint to unlock the doors to the control room.

Around them, the light seeping through the windows slowly turned electric blue. The Balmeras gathered their energy, pooling it for a single defensive strike on the portal, following Commander Holt and Commander Shirogane’s instructions.

For the others, it was a race against time. For Artemis, against encryption. For Commander Holt, to convey his message. For Slav and Coran, to do the calculations to ensure they didn’t seal Voltron and Honerva in the past.

“Now!” Commander Holt called, and the light became so bright that Artemis covered his eyes with his forearm.

A moment later, Slav called to them. “It’s working! The time tunnel is stable!”

Slowly, Artemis lifted his arm from his face and readjusted his glasses. The light had faded some, still bright but not blinding.

“Yes!” Coran shouted. “Yes, yes, yes!” He punched the air with a fist.

“Great shot. The tunnel is stabilizing,” Commander Holt said over his earpiece. 

Meanwhile, on the other channel, Foaly narrated to them the information flowing from inside the tunnel.

“You wouldn’t believe this, Artemis. You thought going back three years was a trip? Try ten fucking thousand! She’s on Altaea!”

Artemis tuned out the background chatter, letting the majority of his focus stay on the readings on his console.

Until he heard Foaly shout again.

“That witch! She trapped Voltron and Atlas!”

“Inside the time tunnel?” Artemis asked.

“Where else, you dolt?”

“We are beginning to run out of energy,” Slav announced to the room. “You must return if you do not wish to remain trapped in the past.”

“It’s not over yet,” Coran reminded them. “We’re holding this rift for every tick we can. Do whatever it takes.”

“We have more help,” Commander Holt announced. “The Blades of Marmora responded to our distress signal with recaptured Galra cruisers.” He projected a hologram of his console readout into the center of the room. “According to my calculations, they can help.”

Artemis glanced over the math, checking it as he went.

“Do it.”

Commander Holt told the Blades to fire.

“Energy levels beginning to trend towards stability again!” Slav declared.

Just as momentary relief grasped the control room again, Commander Holt spoke.

“We’ve lost connections with Voltron and Atlas.”

“The portal is beginning to close,” Slav announced. “Sustaining it beyond this point is unwise.”

“No!” Coran shouted.

The portal grew smaller and smaller. Energy from the ion cannons and Balmeras began to peter out, then stop completely.

Artemis clenched his hands to stop them from shaking.

He closed his eyes.

He didn’t want to see how this would end.


	21. Chapter 20

The Atlas and Voltron followed Honerva back further in time, like playing a twisted game of tag.

They only glimpsed hints of other times, other states of the galaxy and universe.

It would be interesting, if only it wasn’t so goddamn dangerous.

When they reached the beginning of time, they encountered nothing but gravity and light. A single plane with no beginning and no end, and with the consistency of the environment around them, it might have even been a sphere.

They were in the particle that created the Big Bang, before it banged.

Holly stood from where she must have fallen during the last jump, except this didn’t look like the Atlas anymore.

Everything around her was white. Not sterile, hospital white. Like being encased in starlight reflecting off freshly-fallen snow white.

She’d fallen on a hard surface, and as she stood, she could see others around her doing the same. The Paladins. Shiro.

A figure in a black suit of body armor.

Honerva.

Holly reached for her weapon, fully aware that it might not even do anything. They might just die anyway.

Hell, they would die here, no doubt. Scattered across the universe, just cosmic dust.

She could at least try, though.

But Commander Shirogane raised a hand, and she stopped.

“And this is where it ends,” Honerva said.

“Why are you doing this?” Hunk asked. “Time deserves to go on.”

“Time is flawed!” Honerva snapped.

“Everything is flawed,” Pidge answered. “But that doesn’t mean it can’t learn and grow. Look at humans. We made a lot of mistakes. But we learned from them.”

“And now we can teach the rest of the galaxy,” Shiro continued. “We can spread our knowledge and make the universe a better place.”

“Our differences, and what we can learn from each other, make us stronger,” Lance added. 

Honerva scoffed. “But no one learns. I’ve lived more lifetimes than you can even conceive of, Paladins. And each one is filled with pain and loss, like the last. Your optimism is inspiring. But the universe never learns.”

“Lotor learned.” All eyes turned to Allura. “He saw the Galra’s way of life and decided he didn’t want to be a destroyer. He did experiments and he studied to bring and support life, not to take it. He learned he could forge his own way through, however misguided it was.” She stepped towards Honerva, first tentatively, then more confidently. “You can honor your son by giving life. He wouldn’t want it to end like this.”

Something about mentioning Lotor broke Honerva’s shell. She looked down. “There is no way to stop this. The time tunnel will destabilize and destroy everything. It was never meant to be used in this way.”

“Yes, there is,” Allura said.

Honerva nodded. “But do you know the risks, girl?”

“I do.”

“Allura--” Lance said.

“I must go. It’s the only way to save everyone.”

“You can’t.” Lance’s voice cracked.

Holly felt tears in her eyes.

“This is our only chance to restore the universe,” Allura said. “And I am the only one who can take it.” She smiled a watery smile. “Please remember me, even if no one else will.”

“We can’t form Voltron without you, though,” Hunk said.

“You won’t need to.”

And one by one, Allura went through the Atlas’s personnel. She hugged them, and exchanged last words. Foaly made her laugh. Most made her cry, or left with tears in their eyes.

Finally, she reached Holly, and wrapped her in a hug.

“Thank you,” Allura whispered in her ear. “For trying to save the Altaeans. For helping me. For showing me that even without other Altaeans, the magic of the galaxy hasn’t entirely faded away.”

Holly’s vision went blurry as hot tears flooded down her face.

“Thank you,” she whispered thickly.

“I have one last gift.” Allura gripped Holly’s hands, and she felt hot magic flow through her, filling her up from within until the tips of her ears buzzed. “May it serve you well.”

Allura walked back to Honerva, and the two women joined hands.

Power began to swirl and flow around them, purple and blue energy creating a whirlwind that expanded outwards, consuming everything in its path.

And then everything was as it had been before they had entered the time tunnel, only Honerva’s creation floated lifeless through space in front of the Atlas.

And to that end, so did the Blue Lion.

But the people in Honerva’s pyramid had more pressing things to worry about.

“There’s Altaea!” Coran exclaimed.

And for a few moments, they rejoiced.

But glee turned to sadness when they rejoined the Atlas.

Slowly, the universe established its own new normal.

Earth, for the first time in history, had intergalactic activity occurring on it, and within it. 

The Galra and Voltron had left massive power vacuums behind, and efforts to fill those began.

For a time, lawlessness reigned, and some might say it still does in parts of the universe.

It was far from smooth sailing everywhere. The resource deprivation planets had experienced under the Galra devastated them, and suddenly refugees poured forth without fear of the Galra, looking for safety, shelter, and a new start. 

But good developments occurred too. With the restoration of Daibazaal, the Galra had a home again. When Keith won the Kraal Zera and began to reform the Galran government, the universe cheered.

On Earth and Altaea, scientific research on magic and other forms of energy grew into a strong industry, the fruits of which helped people and planets all across the universe to develop and sustain themselves.

In time, defending the universe moved from a practice of violence to one of diplomacy. And instead of defending its existence, the Voltron Coalition defended relationships within it, helping to mediate, negotiate, and enforce treaties and agreements across planets and galaxies to avoid war and the kind of greed which had already, so many times before, brought so much destruction.


	22. Epilogue

And on an individual level, traditions changed too.

Artemis felt a sense of nostalgia sweep over him as he stepped through the doors of the Galaxy Garrison and walked up to the reception desk. He presented his badge for the receptionist, denoting him as director of the European branch of the Garrison, before signing in. She handed him an access card and asked him if he’d like someone to show him around.

But Artemis shook his head and smiled. “No thanks. I think I still know the way.”

Despite it being Christmas Eve, the compound wasn’t a ghost town. Although most of the humans had gone, the People and aliens kept busy. After all, Christmas wasn’t their holiday, and they were glad to repay the favor when the humans worked when they had something to celebrate.

Artemiis saw a few familiar faces on his way to his room, but now wasn’t the time to stop and talk. Today, in a way, was a somber day.

That evening, Artemis put on a coat and walked through the brisk night air to the conference compound.

Everything had changed since they’d began preparing for an invasion. The Garrison had a massive expansion after Sam, Foaly, and Coran had replicated the Teladuv and refined it for commercial use. Now it acted as Earth’s hub for everything anyone looking beyond their own planet might want to research, learn about, or do.

He turned his face to the sky and felt the wind blow across his face.

Myles would be joining him here after Christmas for a conference, but until then, he could enjoy the place in peace. No one was to bring work. It had been explicitly stated in the instructions.

When he reached the building, a guard let him in. 

In the lobby, a marble statue stood above a fountain. The woman, wearing a flowing dress, smiled out over anyone who would enter. She welcomed them with an open heart, the same way she had in life.

Artemis proceeded past Allura’s memorial, and the receptionist took his coat before directing him to the ballroom.

Inside, tables lined the edge of the room, leaving space for a string quartet and a dance floor. Against the opposing wall, a Christmas tree stood, and wrapped packages sat underneath the boughs twinking with lights and decorations from across the universe.

“Artemis!” Commander Holt spotted him and walked over to shake his hand. His smile was nearly as bright as the tree. “I’m so glad you could make it.”

“As am I.” Artemis gestured to the tree. “This is gorgeous.”

“Hunk and Romelle have spent the past two weeks getting it just perfect. They’ve done a great job.”

“I can’t believe it’s been five years.”

“Neither can I. It feels like so much longer. The kids have all grown so much.”

“The world has grown so much.”

“Hey, Mud Boy!” 

Artemis turned to see Holly running towards him. Her dress wasn’t stopping her at all. He prepared himself just in time for her bear hug.

“Long time no see.”

“My apologies,” Artemis said, standing and brushing himself off. “We’ve been quite busy recently.”

Holly waved him off. “How’s Myles?” 

“Good. He’ll be here in a few days. How have the resettlement efforts been?”

Holly shrugged. “Sometimes we get trouble. Goblins especially don’t like the cities expanding. But it’s nothing more than we expected.”

“Good to hear.”

Commander Holt gestured to the tables, slowly being filled by the people trickling into the room. “Please, take a seat.”

Artemis found himself sitting with Holly, Foaly, Slav, and the rest of the MFE pilots as Hunk and his team of chefs from across the galaxy served dinner. The former Paladin beamed as he walked by their table, heading over to the one occupied by his friends, the rest of the meal in his team’s capable hands.

“Hey guys, good to see you!”

They waved back.

Artemis had always found these gatherings surreal. It was odd to gather not on a ship, not ready for battle. 

But they had shared the impossible. It had drawn them together, and kept them together through the years.

So Artemis sat and listened as Slav and Foaly explained their new probability generator, which was going to be used with the newly mainstream Teleduv technology to advise operators regarding the safety of trips. 

“Yeah, but we’re doing something cooler,” Rizavi said, grinning and holding her glass of champagne. “Kincade and I just launched our company. And…” her smile widened, and she held up her other hand, “we’re getting married!”

Congratulations came from around the table, and Commander Holt even stood up to give her a hug.

Foaly pointed a fork at the happy couple. “If you ever need testers, I got them. 28 grandniblings, all ready to play any video game if they can only give you their unfiltered and honest opinions totally freely.”

“I wonder where that came from,” Holly muttered, and Artemis chuckled.

“I’m sure they could also give their honest opinions without having played the game too,” he added.

Foaly glared at him.

“I’m sure Katie would play it too,” Colleen said. “Although she gets a salary, so she’s gotta pay for it. She may have helped save the universe, but she has to learn responsibility too.”

“The joys of youth,” Artemis said. “Always believing you’re right, even to the detriment of yourself and others.”

“Yeah, trust me,” Holly answered. “Artemis may have been smart, but half of his problems were caused by just not knowing when not to show off.”

“That might be true,” Artemis replied. “But at least I grew out of it. If I hadn’t, Foaly and I wouldn’t be able to spend two minutes in a room together.”

“No, you’d just have become the next Opal Koboi.”

“That, too,” Artemis conceded. “Considering my family history, Earth is probably quite lucky that wasn’t the outcome.”

The rest of the night continued in the same way. People caught up after ages of missed camaraderie, danced, drank, and talked. Couples and friends took to the dance floor, and Artemis even went out with Holly for a few songs. The Paladins flew a photography drone over the crowd.

But every so often, it felt like something was missing. That someone should be here who wasn’t.

Finally, everyone trickled out of the room. The reunion had ended.

Until it resumed the next year.

On his way out, Artemis smiled at the statue.

She was here in spirit if not in body. He could feel it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you made it this far, I wholeheartedly thank you.
> 
> This has been my labor of love through my most difficult semester yet and it brought me joy when I struggled. I hope it does similarly to my readers.
> 
> However, whether or not it did, comments and kudos are always appreciated and warm my heart.


End file.
